


The Roof Of The Night

by kyluxtrashcompactor



Series: structural fabrications [2]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Complicated Relationships, Depression, Dysfunctional Relationships, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Past Underage Sex, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts, past abusive relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2017-05-15
Packaged: 2018-09-24 00:05:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 48,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9689834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyluxtrashcompactor/pseuds/kyluxtrashcompactor
Summary: It starts with a funeral in Georgia, with Ben pretending to be Hux's fiance. It ends with a confession of love, and a feeling of promise.Then they come home, and find that sometimes love and hope aren't enough to keep two people together. But Hux's mother is planning a wedding. There's a date eleven months from now.Either they'll go through with it, or they won't.





	1. Too Tired To Count To Five

**Author's Note:**

> I really can't thank [Saltandlimes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltandlimes/pseuds/saltandlimes) enough for betaing and encouraging. She's the gold to my Smaug.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There has been a full series minor character edit in this fic. It is not important to the story.

**_Above the planet on a wing and a prayer,_ **

**_My grubby halo, a vapor trail in the empty air,_ **

**_Across the clouds I see my shadow fly_ **

**_Out of the corner of my watering eye_ **

**_A dream unthreatened by the morning light_ **

**_Could blow this soul right through the roof of the night_ **

[ **_-Pink Floyd, "Learning To Fly"_ ** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCB_INs2E24)

 

It’s five-thirty in the evening, and outside the windows of the L is the ambiguous murk of the underground: inky darkness punctuated by dull yellow strip lighting that flashes by at regular intervals, impressions of brick and metal. The clatter of the tracks has a pattern, c _lack clack_ _thrum_ , getting faster as the train picks up speed, like the elevating heart beat of some great beast racing toward safety.

Ben feels his own pulse begin to rise with the sound, with the press of bodies against him, jostling him as the train sways. His fingers are curled white-knuckled around the stanchion closest to the door, umbrella resting point down on the top of his steel-toed combat boots. His eyes are constantly scanning, taking in body language, expressions, flicking back and forth to the reflections on the window of those people behind him.

He flinches when the woman opposite him adjusts her grip on the pole as the train lurches to the side, planting her hand over Ben’s. She jerks it away quickly, gives him an apologetic look, which broadens into a red-lipped smile when their eyes lock. There are two long seconds before Ben quirks one corner of his lips in response and looks away.

All he can think about, all he’s thought about all day, is getting home. It’s been a week since he and Hux returned from Georgia, and he has fast become Ben’s safe haven. Ben rests his head against the scuffed silver bar, imagining he can still smell Hux on the skin beneath his collar, where his face had been nestled that morning. His eyes drift half-closed, body swaying with the movement of the train, and he imagines he can feel Hux’s soft lips on his neck. The memory of his sleepy murmurs, pressed against Ben’s ear, drowns out the din around him, and he almost sighs in frustration when the train slows, shudders to a stop. There were better memories of this morning he’d like to peruse now that he’s free of work, heading home. There had been had lazy kisses pressed against the kitchen counter while coffee brewed, a hot shower that had nearly made him miss his train.

He hears the doors of the train snick open, and he straightens, filing out with the rest of working Chicago, anxious to be home.

While Ben’s situational awareness is honed to a razor-like edge that remains sharp even years after his discharge from spec ops, he can still recognize that he’s moving more slowly, that he tracks the ever-shifting elements and people in his orbit with just a bit less precision. It’s the sort of thing that, in his previous line of work, could very well have gotten him killed, but now just serves as an indication of how tired and generally distracted he is.

He trudges up the steps to street level instead of taking them two at a time with his normal spry gait. It’s been raining for days, the view at the mouth of the stairwell a monotone of grays; water trickles over the top steps, a gradation of wet shoe-prints emerging from its border and descending below. The city is louder in this weather, with the whir of tires along sodden streets and the incessant drum of rainfall on metal. Ben flicks his black umbrella open as he surfaces and he angles it against the downpour.

He’s three miles from home; he could have gotten off at a closer stop, but the exercise should do him good. The endorphins pulse through him subtly, slowly, with this casual exertion, but it’s welcome as he’s missed his morning workout since the previous Saturday. Before the unexpected trip to Georgia, he religiously woke up at four A.M. and ran two miles to the gym, worked out for an hour, and ran home. Since coming home and spending each night in Hux’s bed, his sleep has been invariably restless. This morning, he’d woken up at three, feeling anxious without being able to pinpoint why, and he’d lain in bed with his arms around Hux, who was nestled against his chest.

Ben had watched the clock tick away one red digital number at a time until Hux stirred against him at six and pressed drowsy kisses against his jaw. He’d rolled over, enveloping Hux in his arms, tasting his sleep-warm mouth, feeling his soft breath on his face, his body extra-heated against him in their shared blankets…

A young man in a drenched red t-shirt collides with Ben’s arm as he runs past in the other direction, roughly scattering Ben’s pleasant thoughts and knocking him back a step. Ben’s teeth clench as the kid just keeps going, without even an apologetic glance, and he swallows back the adrenaline that tries to flood his system, urging him to retaliate. The old Ben, the one buried under years of military discipline, would have dropped his umbrella, caught the asshole by the back of his shirt and thrown him against the wall. His eyes flick to the pedestrians that flow around him now as though he’s a rock in the stream, searching their expressions for any recognition of his failure to react. He only belatedly catches himself doing it.

Sighing, Ben resumes his step, uncurling his fist to rub the crease away from between his eyebrows. A tension headache radiates from the point, pooling behind his eyes, and he grimaces. Hux is intensely fond of soaking in the jacuzzi with Ben as a body pillow, and just now that sounds like a fantastic idea.

It takes him forty minutes to get home with his long stride, and as he shakes his umbrella out on the stoop and slips his key into the door, he thinks that this house he shares with Hux actually _does_ feel like home, rather than just some place he rents a room. It’s a tentative, nebulous feeling, not one he’s ready to give voice to just yet.

He feels his anxiety begin to seep away the moment he opens the door, and he takes a deep breath as he steps inside and shuts out the world. Instantly, the microcosm of his fledgling life with Hux encloses him; only the kitchen light and the living room lamp are on, but there are two new jar candles burning on the coffee table, pale blue, emitting a clean, sea-air aroma. The television is set on youtube, streaming Pink Floyd’s _Momentary Lapse of Reason_ loudly enough that Hux doesn’t hear Ben. He’s in the kitchen, back to the door while stirring something in a copper pot, and it’s the first time Ben has ever heard him singing. He has a nice voice, rich, and it makes Ben smile.

Conscious of startling Hux by sneaking up on him in the kitchen, Ben opens the door again and shuts it with more force. It has the desired effect, and Hux looks over his shoulder, voice cutting off mid-lyric. He gives Ben a sheepish grin and sets the wooden spoon down on a plate amidst droplets of some red sauce.

“Welcome home,” Hux tells him, circling the island and crossing the room to pluck Ben’s umbrella out of his hand. He hangs it on the coat rack by the door next to his own, water dripping onto the towel Hux had laid down when he’d gotten home earlier.

“Didn’t think this day was ever going to end,” Ben complains without much rancor, reaching out and curling his arm around Hux’s waist and pulling him close. They exchange soft pecks, Hux’s eyes lidded, lips curved in a content smile as he loops arms around Ben’s neck.

“I’m making dinner,” he murmurs unnecessarily.

Ben’s answering laugh is a huff of warm air against Hux’s mouth. “You didn’t want me to cook?”

Hux pulls away enough to show him a raised eyebrow and a smirk. “I love you, but some things are not in your skill set.”

“I’ll have you know I make a mean MRE,” Ben counters, remembering how many of the vile, over-salted packaged meals he’d endured in the service. It makes him suddenly grateful in a way he didn’t expect to have someone cooking him a real dinner. Hux had done so every night this week, starting on Monday morning when they both had gone back to work, precipitated by a visit to the grocery store on Saturday during which Hux had clung to Ben’s hand the entire time and discussed everything that went in the cart.

Hux kisses him again and lets go of him, returning to the kitchen, though he smiles back at Ben and says about the MREs: “If the apocalypse should ever be upon us, I’ll remember that.”

Ben snorts, bending down to unlace his boots. “You’ll be lucky to have me around in the apocalypse.”

“I know,” Hux says matter of factly, picking up the spoon again and stirring the sauce. “I’ll be highly sought after for my delicate good looks and exotic coloring.”

Smirking, Ben leaves his shoes by the door, and pads across the living room and down the hall, calling back to Hux that he’s going to change. The hems of his pants are soaked, and the rain has left him mildly damp despite the umbrella. He finds himself thinking of walking down the side of the road with Hux in the rain, of standing in his childhood bedroom drenched, with Hux’s warm lips on his.

He’s worked his fingers down the buttons of his shirt, thinking he wouldn’t mind a repeat of the hot shower they’d taken this morning, when he comes to a full stop just inside his bedroom door. His breath is caught in his throat, heart stuttering with adrenaline. His closet door is open, and his eyes immediately flick to the ammunition canister on the top shelf; it’s where he keeps the things he wants no one - including himself - to see. There are letters from his parents in there, begging his forgiveness for things he doesn’t want to think about. His grandfather’s medals, which Anakin had pinned to his uniform before he shot himself in the head. A creased white envelope stuffed with newspaper articles.

His top dresser drawer is open, and Ben can see that most of the contents have been removed; all his socks are gone, and there are two white undershirts remaining. They’re laying off to the side, not where Ben had left them, and as he moves closer, he sees they’ve been dropped half uncovering his 9mm Glock 19.

“Ben, I’m…”

Ben’s whole body twitches in violent surprise, and when he whirls around to face the door, Hux’s words die in his mouth and the color drains from his cheeks.

“What the fuck were you doing in here?” Ben snaps before he can catch the words.

Hux takes a tentative step into the room, stops. The bridge of his nose is turning pink, and he folds his arms around his torso, looking poised to flee. “I uh… was just trying to organize everything into my … um, our room.” The last two words come out weak, unsure. His eyes dart over Ben’s face, brow wrinkling.

“Hux you can’t just …” Ben starts, heart thundering in his ears, but the sound of his own shrill voice stops him and he scrubs his hand across his mouth roughly, looking away. He _can’t_. He can’t blow up at the man he loves.

“I know, Ben. I’m sorry.” Hux takes another step forward, but when Ben sways back impulsively, he freezes again. “I should have asked.”

Ben pierces him with a half-glare once more. “What were you doing in my closet?”

Hux’s eyes meet his, and unlike most people reacting to Ben’s ire, he doesn’t look away. The gaze he levels at Ben is placid, his next words calm without being placating. “I moved your ties.” He waves a hand at the door of the closet, and Ben turns to see that the tie rack that had once hung there is gone.

It’s the sort of thing that Ben usually would have noticed instantly, and it makes him feel like his control over his environment has diminished even further, like his once sharp edges are irreparably dulled.

A hand touches his arm and Ben flinches again. Hux doesn’t withdraw, but Ben can’t meet his eyes. If he does, he feels like he’ll have to speak, to explain, to apologize, and he doesn’t have words for that right now. He feels the tips of his ears redden with residual shame for his anger, even while indignation burns in his chest.

“I hope you didn’t touch that gun,” he growls, staring at it lying in the bottom of the drawer.

Hux’s hand disappears from his arm. “I know how to handle firearms, Ben. I’m quite a good shot, actually.” Ben looks at him with incredulity, and Hux’s small effort at a smile slips. “I didn’t touch it,” he adds sullenly. “I’m sorry.”

Ben stares at him, unable not to imagine what might have happened if Hux _didn’t_ know how to handle a gun, and had picked it up in curiosity.

Hux is studying his face, remorse plain on his features, and he takes a step back. “I’m going to go finish dinner,” he says quietly, and then he turns and walks out, leaving Ben hovering in front of the dresser.

Rage crawls across Ben’s skin in needles of cold, and he has to grind his teeth to keep from ripping the drawer out and hurling it across the room. Not because he’s angry at Hux, but because he’d let his control slip and Hux had seen it. Ben had kept this side of him hidden from Hux so far, but _fuck_ , he’s too goddamned tired to count to five before he speaks.

He puts his hand on the drawer calmly instead, meaning to push it closed, but a memory struggles to the surface, and instead he reaches in and picks up the Glock. It fits into his hand with mechanical familiarity; this had been the model weapon chosen for MARSOC Marines, and he’d carried one for years. Habitually, he checks the safety, relieved to find it on.

Passing a thumb over the safety switch, he flicks it off, back on, and off again, and he remembers sitting on the end of his bed the winter before last listening to the metallic click count off reasons why he shouldn’t pull the trigger. He’d told himself at the time that if he got to the end of that mental exercise and the safety was off, he’d do it. The last reason was because he hadn’t wanted Hux to see it, because he knew from experience that the image would be burned into his retinas, and he’d never be able to unsee it. Even now, Ben can picture his grandfather that day he’d found him, over fifteen years ago.

The thought makes his stomach turn, and he shuts his eyes. The darkness behind them warps and tries to coalesce into a vision of the cabin, of Anakin in his mahogany leather recliner, of his newly polished jump boots and the gleaming metal buttons of his uniform coat. With a shuddering breath, Ben forces himself to push that image aside, to replace it with something mundane, simple, comforting. Even practicing guided meditation in therapy, he has a hard time making anything stick, of visualizing something that doesn’t morph into some horrific simulacrum. The peaceful green forest has dark shadows where things lurk, watching him. The bright blue ocean is full of invisible, fanged perils.

He rejects all these images and then suddenly he’s picturing the tree house in Georgia instead, bracketed in the powerful branches of the massive, old oak. The sun is filtering through verdant summer leaves, the air redolent with pine and heavy with afternoon heat, and Hux’s hand is in his.

 _Hux_.

Ben’s chest twists, and he opens his eyes, glancing down at the mostly empty drawer as he lets out a long, shuddering breath. He doesn’t feel his pulse pounding between his eyes any more, feeling returning to the tips of his fingers as he lays the Glock on the dresser. Hux is offering him something that he’d not even dared to hope for with another person: a space in his life, a harbor that is more than just a place to ride out the storm. Had Ben’s reaction to his gesture made him regret it?

Walking to his closet, Ben stares up at the ammo canister, seeing that it’s still closed, still draped with a winter coat just like he’d left it. He backs out and pushes the door closed tightly, starts to close his bedroom door behind him as he exits the room, but stops himself. He starts to leave it only partly ajar, takes two steps down the hall, then turns and pushes it all the way open.

He feels drained now as he walks to the kitchen, like the flood of violent, unexpected emotions have scoured him and left him hollow; it’s the way he always feels after he regains control. The aroma of whatever dish Hux is cooking wafts down the hall to greet him, and Ben realizes when noticing the clink of ceramic that Hux has turned off his music. For some reason, Ben feels worse about that than anything else.

Hux is taking plates out of the cabinet when Ben emerges into the kitchen, and he glances at Ben briefly before leaning down to look through the lighted oven window. When he doesn’t speak, Ben founders, unsure what to say. To give himself time to think, he slips past Hux and opens the refrigerator, taking out a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon. He cracks the tab as he stands in the open door, taking a sip and realizing with the uncomfortable caress of cold air that he’d only gotten so far in changing clothes as to unbutton his shirt.

Hux straightens, pulling on two red oven mitts, and looks at Ben again. Ben tracks his eyes moving from the door he’s propping open with one hip, to the beer in his hand, lingering there. Hux meets his eyes just briefly again, then opens the oven.

“I hope you like lasagna,” he murmurs.

Ben lets out a breath, lets the refrigerator door swing shut as he moves to a bar stool. The alcohol settles in his otherwise empty stomach, reminding him that he’d skipped lunch today. “Does anyone not like lasagna?” He means the words to be buoyant, but his voice comes out gravelly and despondent.

Hux shuts the oven door with his knee, settles the piping lasagna on the stove, and plucks a shaker of some green seasoning from his spice rack. He sprinkles some over the melted cheese before he speaks again, back still to him. “How was your day?”

Ben has never really known how to respond to that question. His parents used to ask him that when he came home from school, and he’d always wanted to scream _It was fucking horrible, ok? I hate my teachers and the other kids hate me!_

“It was ok,” he says instead, takes a sip of his beer, then adds: “How was yours?”

Hux shrugs. “It was ok.” Then he turns around, hands propped behind him where he leans against the counter. “Are you mad at me?”

Ben frowns, sifting through his recent feelings, knowing that anger toward Hux had not been one of them. “No. I’m not mad at you.” He’s _something_ , but he isn’t sure what.

Hux searches his face, sensing his reticence, perhaps, but he doesn’t press Ben on it. “I should have asked. I thought…” he blows out a lungful of air, tilts his head up toward the ceiling. “I didn’t think, actually. I didn’t think that you might not appreciate me just, going through your stuff. I should have…”

“Hux.” Ben feels like his skin is suddenly too tight and too warm and that he needs to get up and go outside. But he stays where he is. “It’s ok. Just... maybe after dinner we can... work on that together, or something.” The suggestion is impulsive, a way to derail Hux from apologizing any more.

Hux stares at him for a moment as though waiting to see if Ben is serious, and then offers him a tentative smile, eyebrows lifted slightly. “Really?”

Ben nods, though his stomach drops at the thought. The pleasant dream that was holding hands in a treehouse and admissions of love in a warm shower is so quickly being hammered into a stark reality that will undoubtedly magnify Ben’s every flaw. It’s like a bomb has been armed, and the countdown to the inevitable end has begun.

Hux’s smile broadens, not privy to the torrent of self-doubt Ben feels. Crossing to him, Hux leans between Ben’s thighs and wraps an arm around his waist, drifting close to him and brushing their noses together. Hux’s eyes remain open, locked with Ben’s; it’s his completely disarming way of asking for a kiss, as Ben has discovered over the last week. Ben complies, and a gentle hand strokes his back in return, nails feather-light along his spine.

Hux pulls away after only a moment, returning to the cooling lasagna on the stove. He chatters amiably about his day while serving their dinner, telling Ben about the highly efficient program he’d written, the fact that there had been doughnuts in the breakroom which someone had cut in half (which offended Hux because after that they really weren’t doughnuts, were they?), and then about getting a text from Phasma asking them to go out on Saturday.

Hux has managed to cover all of this news in a rushed voice by the time he sets a plate of steaming pasta and a small garden salad down in front of Ben and settles beside him at the bar. He almost immediately starts to get up again, looking at Ben with wide, concerned eyes. “Do you want parmesan? Red pepper?”

Ben shifts his free hand to Hux’s thigh, applying a gentle pressure in the direction of Hux’s chair. “I’m good, baby. Thank you.”

He registers that Hux is possibly over-compensating to some degree now, perhaps unsure that Ben is not secretly nursing anger over the invasion of his space. It’s not terribly different from the behavior of a frightened animal, and it makes Ben’s stomach curdle with shame. _It’s only been a week. They shouldn’t be in this place._

Hux settles back on the bar stool, and Ben gives him a weak smile. Ben picks at his food, forcing himself to eat because Hux had cooked for him. “So, how’s Mitaka?” he asks, and Hux snorts.

“Beside himself. He’s planning my bachelor party already.”

Ben’s heart skips a beat. He hadn’t forgotten for one second the way they’d left things in Georgia. Hux’s family still thinks they’re engaged, and his mother had even picked a month to host the ceremony at their family home. She had Ben’s phone number now as well, and had sent him a text the day before about whether Ben wanted a rabbi to be present. Ben hadn’t been able to think of how to respond.

“Will it involve strippers?” Ben asks about the hypothetical bachelor party. He spears a tomato and gives Hux what he hopes is an amused look, rather than one of complete panic.

Hux laughs, dipping a piece of garlic toast in marinara. “I’m tempted to request them just to see Mitaka succumb to mortification.” He chews thoughtfully for a second. “Although I think he’d be pretty funny drunk.” Hux gives him a sideways smirk. “He wants to meet you.”

Ben coughs around a mouthful of beer, thinking of the proposed outing with Phasma on Saturday. “Are you planning to tell Phas?”

“About Mitaka?”

“About us.”

Hux stops eating, fork resting on the edge of his plate. “I mean…” His cheeks color. “What do you want to tell her?”

Ben moves sauce around on his dish, thinking. He tries to picture himself sitting around a table at the club laughing about this hilarious ruse they’d pulled off at Hux’s childhood home, convincing everyone they were engaged, mocking the fact that it had been so believable. He has no desire to have that conversation. But does he lie to his best friend? “I don’t know,” he admits.

“Maybe we just won’t introduce her to Mitaka yet,” Hux suggests lightly, taking a sip of red wine. They sit in weighted silence for a moment, the only sounds the scrape of utensils against ceramic, the patter of raindrops on the roof. Then Hux makes a small noise like he’s just remembered something important. “So, I was thinking we should get an actual table. You know? With actual chairs. It was nice eating dinner at a table in Georgia. I didn’t realize I missed it.”

Ben lets out a deep breath, reaches out and settles his hand on Hux’s thigh, squeezing. “Yeah. We should absolutely get a table.”  

 

The rest of dinner passes with more innocuous conversation, neither of them willing to broach the subject of their false engagement. Ben tries to help Hux wash the dishes afterward, but Hux shoos him away, telling him to go change out of his work clothes. Ben obeys with only token argument, because he senses that Hux still feels like he needs to atone in some way, and if doing the dishes works for him in that regard, so be it.

He shrugs out of his shirt at the foot of his bed, feeling rather warm and drowsy. Part of him wants to stretch out and sleep for an hour, but he’s distracted by the thought of moving his things into Hux’s room. He kicks off his pants, thinking he won’t be able to do that with such lack of care in Hux’s room. So far, the only time clothes can be willfully ignored on the floor are when they’re shed in the heat of the moment.

Ben pads to his dresser, opening the drawers one by one. Everything is folded with military precision, which defies the way he undresses. He supposes that at least the well-trained, efficient side of him will meet Hux’s expectations. He’s still standing there thinking when Hux appears again in the door. Ben watches Hux’s eyes trail appreciatively down his mostly naked torso, and it makes him feel hot inside and out in a way that is part bashfulness and part arousal. He takes his gun off the dresser, sets it in the top drawer, and shuts it.

Hux walks across the room, sliding his arms around Ben’s waist and resting against his shoulder. “We should wait until this weekend to do all this,” Hux murmurs against his skin.

Ben snakes his arms around Hux’s slighter frame. “Whatever you want to do.”

Hux turns his face up, kisses the bottom of Ben’s chin, hands trailing softly down the small of Ben’s back, over the swell of his ass. “I want to go to bed.”

“It’s only seven-thirty,” Ben points out, pretending not to grasp Hux’s meaning.

Hux snorts, hooking his thumbs over the waistband of Ben’s boxers, pushing them down slowly, caressing the shape of him with slender fingers. Ben sighs, hiding his face in Hux’s hair, unable to corral his body’s reaction to Hux’s touch.

Hux’s lips are on his neck, hot, soft, insistent, then his voice is in Ben’s ear, half-breathless. “I wasn’t good today. You should punish me.”

Ben jerks his head away, looking down at Hux. The pupils in his green eyes are fat with desire, and his fingers move to the buttons of his dress shirt, plucking them open. Ben manages a choked laugh. “Punish you?” Even as he says it, his heart is hammering in his throat, pushing blood to his cock with every pulse.

“Mmmhm,” Hux purrs, dropping the shirt from his pale shoulders. The rest of his clothes quickly form a puddle on the floor with Ben’s, and he slides a hand up Ben’s chest. “You need to make sure I remember how to behave.”

Ben’s skin is hot, though he backs away a step. “Hux,” he mutters, but then Hux’s hand reaches his neck, fingers starting to close around his throat, and something in Ben folds, aches, needs. He snatches Hux’s wrist, twists his arm down, captures the other one and wrenches them behind his back. He distantly recognizes that he’s holding him too hard, but his vision is dark at the corners, and Hux’s groan isn’t of pain, nor is the way he ruts his hips forward asking Ben to stop. And so Ben gives in to the deep, dark thing Hux is pulling at.

The sex is rough, and Ben barely feels human through any of it. Later, only a few images of it will stick with him, as though someone, something else, had possessed him: Hux’s face pressed against the mattress, Ben’s hand holding him down by the back of his neck, Hux’s fingers curled white-knuckled in the comforter of Ben’s bed, the way he can’t come until Hux is sobbing _please_ , with tears on his cheek.

Ben collapses into a sex-fueled haze afterward, mind blank. Hux, seemingly equally as exhausted, is limp, lying half beneath him, and they both sleep. Ben doesn’t return to himself until Hux shifts under him, and his soft groan, this time definitely of pain, shocks Ben fully awake.

For some reason, the first thing he is compelled to do is check the time; it’s 9:04 P.M. and it’s dark outside. The room itself is near black, their naked bodies lit only by the glow of the alarm clock. Hux shifts again, and Ben rolls back to let him turn. His every movement is stiff against Ben, and something crushing and guilty settles in Ben’s chest, rises to his throat, threatening to choke him.

He runs a hand over Hux’s head, his cheek, shoulder, down his arm, which is pressing in to circle Ben’s waist. Ben’s hand draws up again to the back of Hux’s neck, and he _remembers_ , he feels fingers on the back of his own neck, and he feels sick. “Are you ok?” he rasps.

“Mm?” Hux shifts closer, pressing his face against the hollow of Ben’s throat, tucking his thigh between Ben’s.

Ben can’t move, or speak for a moment. “Did I hurt you?” he finally manages.

Hux makes an indistinct sound. His answer is muffled. “I liked it.”

Ben holds him as gently as he can manage, trying to breathe evenly, trying to stay there beside him. He can already tell this will be another night that he won’t be able to sleep. The same question that has kept him up for a week is haunting him, a swelling darkness in the back of his mind.

Is what Hux likes, is the person Hux loves, truly Ben? Or just the person he’s pretending to be? The person he is trying so hard to hold together?

 


	2. The Proverbial Elephant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you [thecopperriver](http://archiveofourown.org/users/thecopperriver/pseuds/thecopperriver) for betaing this chapter! <3

The rain had finally let up, though the sky was still a leaden gray full of threat and bedraggled, wispy cloud-cover. A cool breeze off the lake tugs at Ben’s hair, humidity making it curl wildly around his face, and the drop in temperature teases at an early fall which he knows is still months away. Nevertheless, it’s a welcome departure from the muggy urban summer, and he leans against the glass front of his favorite barbecue restaurant alternately watching for Phasma and checking his cell phone for messages.

The door opens to his left, bells jingling against the interior side as two women spill out onto the street. They are followed by aromas of smoked meat and spices and vinegar, and it makes Ben’s stomach clench with a painful growl that is almost instantly suppressed by a twinge of nausea.  

He pictures himself again, as he has a score of times already today, blinking in the fluorescent glare of the master bath that morning. Hux is at the sink in front of him, damp from his shower, yawning as he combs his hair. There, along the slender nape of Hux’s pale neck, is a blue-black smudge, an elliptical shaped bruise just the size of Ben’s thumb.

The shock of it had settled like ice along his spine and remains there even now, prompting his very nerve endings to remind him that he harbors something sinister and violent at his core that took no better care of Hux than to leave him marred that way.  It’s an image which he is sure will never be scrubbed from his conscience. Hux, of course, had dismissed it when Ben brushed the mark with careful, remorseful fingertips, and Ben’s murmured apologies against his neck fell unacknowledged as though there was truly no reason for them. He had even turned in Ben’s arms and bared his throat and suggested with a glint in his eye that Ben mark him where his co-workers would see it, angry and fresh above the starched collar of his shirt.

He couldn’t laugh about it then, and he still can’t. Rubbing at the ghostly pressure of fingers over his own neck, only dimly registering what he’s doing, Ben taps the display of his phone back on. His background is a picture they’d taken laying on the couch earlier in the week, with Millicent coiled on Hux’s chest and half obscuring Ben’s face with her hind-quarters; Ben’s laughing into Hux’s hair, cat tail over his nose. Hux had sent him a copy of the photo with the caption _our family_.

There’s a text notification, finally, in the top left corner of the picture. Ben opens it, sighing when he sees it’s not from Hux. It’s another message from Aislain, asking if he’d gotten her previous text about having a rabbi at the wedding, and could he believe she’d found someone that could make that armadillo-shaped cake, and did she have the right number? It’s addressed _Dear Ben,_ and signed, _Love, Mom_ , like a tiny electronic letter, and he just stares at it, having no idea how to respond. _Sorry, I’m not really engaged to your son. I lied to you the first time I met you. I don’t even talk to my own mother, so you don’t want me for a son._

He’s managed to punch in a very elegant attempt at a reply consisting of the word _hi_ when a new notification box pops up, superimposed on the text to Aislain.

 

 _Hux (11:39 a.m.)_   _Why would I be upset with you?_

 

Ben hesitates, part of him not wanting to bring it up again. He’d shot off a text as he rode the train in to work, unable to push aside the image of Hux’s perfect skin darkened with his thumbprint. Afraid Hux has just been placating him.

 

 _Ben (11:40 a.m.)_   _Just the thing this morning._

 

 _Hux (11: 41 a.m.)_   _The thing where I got to see you naked before I had to go to work? Definitely not upset about that._

 

Despite himself, Ben feels a grin stretch across his lips. He starts to type a reply when a familiar voice chimes in from outside his peripheral vision.

“I can sure tell who you’re talking to.”

Ben’s head snaps up, and he bites his bottom lip in a failed attempt to curb that particular smile that really only belongs to Hux. “You can’t tell shit,” he tells Phasma.

“Mmmhm,” Phasma hums with mock disdain. Even in glossy silver basketball pants, sneakers, and a red t-shirt emblazoned with her gym logo, the former Marine corporal manages to look classy. “Put that phone up and let’s eat.”

Ben glances at his screen again as Phasma strolls past him and tugs the door open, holding it for Ben as she gives him a pointed look with one perfectly manicured blonde eyebrow raised. Ben erases the longer reply he’d been typing, replacing it with a simple  _ILU_ , and shoves the phone in his pants’ pocket.  

They order their food and take a seat by the window at a lovingly worn, stout wooden table. They are separated by an upright silver napkin dispenser and plastic bottles of ketchup, mustard, and the dive’s signature barbecue sauce, which Phasma picks up and liberally applies to her sliced beef brisket.

“You look like shit, buddy.”

Ben makes a face at her. “Thanks.”

“Hux keeping you up all night with that good dicking?”

Ben inhales his lemonade, coloring. “Jesus, Phasma.” He glances around to see if anyone had heard, but the lunchtime din of the place seems to have drowned her out.

Phasma’s lips tuck into an amused smile and she gives his shin a nudge under the table with her shoe. “Oh come on, Sergeant Solo. You’ve heard worse.”

“Worse than you?” Ben grumbles, taking a bite of his Texas toast. He chews sullenly, attempting to ignore both Phasma and her question, even while her gaze keeps flicking to him expectantly while she eats.

Phasma picks up her can of diet coke and takes a swig. “Seriously though,” she says, setting it down again. “What’s up? I haven’t seen you with circles under your eyes like this since basic.”

Ben finally meets her eyes, shrugging. His phone buzzes in his pocket, but he doesn’t allow himself to take it out. “I don’t know,” he says around a mouthful of potato salad; it’s gotten barbecue sauce mixed into it from his styrofoam plate, which is just how he likes it.

“Don’t give me that shit,” Phasma growls. “I’ve known you nearly a decade. You not sleeping?”

Ben shakes his head. “Not much.”

“And not in a good way?”

Ben shakes his head again. He glances back up at Phasma, her plastic fork hovering over a side of jalapeno green beans as she regards him. There’s a tiny crease between her brows.

“Is the sex bad?”

With an exasperated sigh, Ben sits back in his chair, which favors one metal leg and tilts to the left. “Not everything is about sex, Phas.”

“So it _is_ bad. I would have thought the two of you…”

“ _Phasma_ ,” Ben hisses. “It’s good, ok? It’s not that. I just … can’t sleep. I get … I dunno. Nervous like I used to at basic.”

He’s referring to his first few months of basic training, sleeping in the barracks. Congregate settings like that hadn’t been entirely new; he’d shared a room with four other boys his age when he’d attended Portman Ford as a teenager. He’d known that after leaving that place he had nightmares, but he hadn’t known that they were so severe they caused him to cry out in his sleep, to talk, to rail against his tormentors. There had been so much more anger in his soul then. His bunk mates had chided him for it, and he’d woken up more than once to the impact of a hurled boot in his back before he learned to sleep with his sheet bunched in his mouth, or a pillow over his head. When he could sleep at all.

Phasma reads his face well enough. Ben remembers her giving him that same look years ago not long after he’d come home from Afghanistan, when he admitted to her that he struggled with wanting to end things. Her eyes are soft, when they usually aren’t, and her lips are a narrow line of concern.

“What are you afraid of?” she asks, pitching her voice not to be overheard, at last.

Ben shrugs again, knowing at least part of that answer, but not wanting to voice it aloud.

“Is this what you do in therapy?” Phasma chides. “Just shrug a lot?”

“This isn’t supposed to be therapy,” Ben grumbles after swallowing a mouthful of pulled pork. “I’m supposed to be having lunch with my best friend.”

“And you are. What aren’t you telling me?” Her blue eyes bore into his, and Ben feels the blood draining from his face.

He’d had the vain hope that perhaps he could manage to get away with not telling Phasma about the fake engagement that seems to have become a snowball inexorably rolling downhill, wrapping more layers about it as it goes. Ben sighs, slumps against the table, and tells her everything, from that first crushing moment Hux said to Ben that he’d made up the lie about him because Ben’s picture was the only one on his phone, to the thrill of their first kiss and the confession of love in the shower. Phasma injected here and there with a question, but mostly listened intently as she finished her lunch. Ben got the sneaking suspicion that none of this surprised her.

“So, anyway,” he concludes eloquently, taking a sip of lemonade. “That’s where things are at. I’m just … waiting for the hammer to drop, I guess.”

Phasma snorts, but her expression is sympathetic. “You’re too hard on yourself. Always have been.”

Ben lifts one shoulder and lets it fall, stirring the remaining food in his container but not having much appetite left. “I don’t know what to do.”

“You mean about the fact that you’re engaged to the love of your life and didn’t even have to ask?”

Ben gives her a droll look. “We’re not actually engaged though…” Even he hears the quaver of doubt in his words.

“You’re both idiots,” Phasma announces, wiping her fingers on a copious wad of napkins and then closing the empty styrofoam container around the trash. “It took you two years to get here. Just let it ride for now.”

“You mean I should just go along with his mother’s wedding plans?” Ben frowns, thinking of the texts he still hasn’t answered, feeling a multi-faceted stab of guilt.

“Have you even taken him on a date yet?” Phasma asks instead.

Hux had suggested it more than once, always casually and with a note of shy hope. Ben had intended to follow through with doing so, but they had hardly left the house since coming home from Georgia. It wasn’t by design - it just seemed that whenever Hux’s hands were on him, they ended up in bed, one way or the other. Perhaps that’s normal, early on.

“Give me your phone.” Phasma holds her hand out, snapping two fingers when Ben just stares at her. “Come on.”

Reluctantly, Ben tugs his phone out of his pocket, unlocks it, and lays it in Phasma’s waiting palm. She swipes through his contacts, opening up the recent text conversation with Hux. Smirking at whatever thing Hux had last said, she starts tapping something out. Ben leans over, trying to get a look at it in case he needs to object.

“You just told him you’re going out tonight, and to wear something sexy.” She hands Ben his phone back, and he holds it aloft over the table, dumbly. "You're welcome."

“Where are we going?”

“There’s a swanky jazz dive he’ll love. Live music and a whiskey bar. You can’t go wrong.”

Ben wrinkles his nose at the mention of jazz, and Phasma leans back in her chair, crossing her arms.

“If you don’t like jazz, how can you hope to have romance in your life?”

This makes Ben laugh, glancing up from his phone as he waits for Hux to respond to Phasma’s message. “That doesn’t sound like you.”

Phasma grunts. “I’m full of surprises.”

Ben’s phone chimes again before he can respond. Hux has texted _Wear something sexy? Like lingerie?_ Ben immediately pictures this, feeling his cheeks warm. Phasma leans over to try to read his phone, but Ben holds it out of her view as he types a quick reply of _yes, good._

He pockets his phone again and begins clearing the trash from the table. It’s far easier to pretend that everything will be fine, that he and Hux will somehow come to an understanding without ever actually having to talk about it.

“So will you be my best man at the wedding?” He gives Phasma a coy glance and earns a broad smile in return.

“The two of you will have to duke it out.” Phasma stands and shoves her trash into the plastic take-away bag.

Ben follows her out the door, crosses the sidewalk to toss his trash into the receptacle. “I knew you first,” he says with mock hurt.

Phasma rolls her eyes, takes a few steps toward Ben until she’s close enough to take his face between both hands. She’d done that in his early days of basic, when he’d been on the verge of losing his temper. Other soldiers had given them shit for it, calling Phasma Ben's momma. “Listen. Don’t overthink shit. He loves you. You love him. End of story.”

Ben frowns. “It’s not that sim…” He’s kept from finishing that sentence by Phasma smacking his cheek.

“When have I ever steered you wrong, little brother?” Phasma releases Ben and begins walking back toward the bus stop that would take her to work.

“You’re like, three minutes older than me,” Ben grumbles, keeping pace with her. Sunlight peeks through the thick canopy of clouds, speckling the sidewalk with patches of wan yellow.

Phasma glances at him, grinning. “Yeah. And I’m infinitely wiser.”

Ben doesn’t argue with this, thinking that is more than likely the truth.

 

* * *

 

 

Hux is wearing headphones, playing Vivaldi  while he codes, and is in such a zone that he misses his phone lighting up for a half hour, at least. By the time he finally looks over and notices it blinking, there are five missed messages.

 

_Ben (12:25 pm) so I told Phasma_

 

_Ben (12:25 pm) about the fake engagement thing_

 

_Ben (12:30 pm) I hope you aren’t mad at me_

 

_Ben (12:35pm) also your mom texted me about wedding cake and I don’t know what to say. Do you think you should talk to her?_

 

_Ben (12:45pm) are you mad at me? I’m sorry. I have to get back to work I’ll see you tonight ilu_

 

Something heavy and cold settles in Hux’s chest, expanding and not allowing him to take a full breath. He’d been dreading this moment, knowing it was coming, but a large part of him had wanted this illusion to persist a little longer. If Ben had told Phasma, that meant he was ready to eject the proverbial elephant from the room, which is undoubtedly the reason he wants to take Hux out tonight. So they can have neutral ground to decide how they should go about dismantling this web they’re caught in.

Or rather, this web of his own making that Hux, like some sort of venomous, lonely spider, has trapped Ben in. It’s probably been Ben’s plan all along to somehow let Hux down easily, and certain things begin to fall into place in Hux’s mind like lines of code in a script. Ben’s seeming reluctance to commit to a real date, the way he’s so hesitant to go to bed with Hux unless Hux turns up the seductive dial to eleven, Ben’s anger at Hux trying to assimilate their living space, and now he’d told Phasma the truth and cracked everything open, without even discussing it with Hux beforehand.

Hux tries to quell the emotions that beg to surface, telling himself that he is being foolish to consider that this ruse about being engaged could actually go on. Of course it couldn’t. Of course he’d have to tell his mother, whose loneliness and grief seems to have found an outlet in the planning of this mythical wedding. Hux suddenly recalls Ben’s face in the Uber a week before, when Hux had shown him the text he’d sent Mitaka, proclaiming them engaged; Ben obviously hadn’t found it so delightfully amusing as Hux. And why should he? It’s all a lie. A truly pathetic lie.

Fingers brush his shoulder, startling him so badly that he jumps in his chair and drops his phone on his keyboard, splicing a string of random letters into his perfect line of code. Hux swears, turns around abruptly to see Mitaka standing behind him, mid-wince. Wrenching the headphones off his head, Hux swallows a nasty rebuke.

“Yes?” he bites out.

Mitaka gives him an apologetic half smile. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

Hux sighs, letting the air whistle out through his teeth. “It’s fine. What’s up?”

Mitaka glances briefly at Hux’s computer screen, then back. “Do you want to go get some coffee?”

The immediate response that forms on Hux’s tongue is refusal, followed closely enough by a strong desire for caffeine and a need to get away from his computer, where he’s sat without a break since 7:30 am. (That time being a full hour past when he used to get into the office, thanks to his complete lack of ability to leave the cocoon of Ben’s arms in the morning).

Hux grabs his phone and tucks it into the chest pocket of his button down and stands. “Yeah,” he tells Mitaka about coffee. “That sounds like a good idea.”

Their cubes are housed in a building that spans several blocks, boasting numerous restaurants, convenience stores, a bank, and even a dry cleaner. The idea is that the hard working employees of Murdoch and West can spend as much time as possible chained to their desks as opposed to doing real-life errands. Hux had availed himself of the convenience often in the five years he’d been an employee here, subsisting on food from vendor stalls and coffee, working late into the evening to avoid going home to an empty house.

After Ben had moved in, Hux had clocked out precisely at the eight hour mark, hurrying home and telling himself he was doing so because he wanted to be around should his new roommate need anything. Looking back, it’s rather glaringly obvious that Phasma had known what she was about putting them together, and Hux had been drawn like a moth to flame. Yet nothing had come of it, Ben had not opened up to him, and gradually Hux again became the last person to break from the cube farm at night, his desk the one lonely pool of light in a dark room.

As he walks with Mitaka and descends through the eastern stairwell, Hux begins planning his fast approaching return to that existence. He can’t imagine how he’ll deal with the humiliation of explaining to his family that his engagement to Ben was a farce; there’s no way that won’t somehow spread through his entire hometown. It’ll be like some sort of gossip osmosis, where the mere proximity of a person who knows something to someone who doesn’t will result in the spread of information. Furthermore, his mother will be crushed, and the tenuous restructuring of his relationship with his brother will surely experience a setback, if not be entirely dissolved in disappointment.  

The hardest part, he thinks as Mitaka holds the door open for him and they emerge into the common space in the ground floor atrium, will be pretending with Ben that he’s not crushingly disappointed. That he hadn’t actually lain awake in Ben’s arms at night lulled by the rise and fall of his chest, dreaming of the way they’ll wake up that last morning before their wedding in Hux’s old room in Georgia. It’s the place where Hux had been the most uncertain of his future, the most fearful of never finding friendship or love, and ever since his mother had suggested having the wedding at his family home, Hux hadn't been able to stop thinking about the perfect metaphor of coming full circle.

“You ok?” Mitaka’s voice pierces his inner dialogue, and Hux glances at him sharply.

“I’m fine? Why?”

“You just look upset,” Mitaka says, pitching his voice low so that his words don’t register with the other people in line for coffee.

Hux rubs a hand across his forehead, pressing out lines, starts to run it through his hair but stops short of tousling it. He sighs. “Just a lot on my mind.”

Mitaka offers him a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He’s worn this expression often in his interactions with Hux since Hux had not very gently dropped the bomb about his engagement to Ben and dashed Mitaka’s hopes for them. Mitaka had, Hux surmises, liked him a good bit more than Hux had realized.

“You know you should have someone to help you with all the logistic details,” Mitaka suggests as they shuffle up a few paces in line.

Hux’s mind races to grasp the meaning behind that, considering his various coding projects, before it registers that Mitaka is referring to the wedding. He snorts, sucks in a deep, steadying breath, almost blurts out _there isn’t going to be a wedding, ever, not me, I would never be that lucky and I’m pathetic for lying about it_.

“Yeah, who would have thought there are so many things to plan?” he says instead, clearing his throat and looking at the floor.

The conversation is derailed momentarily by them reaching the counter where they place their orders. Mitaka buys his coffee while Hux is distracted looking at the baked goods and thinking about the three wedding cakes that will never exist now. Hux comes back to himself when Mitaka says his name, and he colors slightly as he moves out of the way for the next customer.

Mitaka puts the coffee in Hux’s hand. “It’s finally stopped raining. We should go sit outside for a bit.”

Hux nods, fighting the urge as they walk to spill everything, just to have someone to talk to about it. Ben has Phasma; while Hux and she were friends, Hux knows that the bond between the ex-soldiers is special. More like family. The consideration brings to stark light the fact that Hux actually doesn’t have any friends. He and Mitaka hadn’t been particularly close before Hux asked him out, although Mitaka seems to be making the effort now.

They settle on a concrete planter surrounding a landscaping arrangement. Water droplets still cling to the foliage, the mulch a rich dark color like fertile delta soil. Wind caresses Hux’s face, tugging a single strand of hair loose to tickle his nose. Hux brushes it away, and it drifts back a moment later.

Mitaka is sitting beside him, legs stretched out and feet crossed, holding his coffee in his lap with both hands. “Do you … want to talk about anything?” he offers.

Hux pulls the lid off of his coffee cup, watching the steam escape for several long seconds as he tries to formulate a reply. “I don’t know if it’s going to work out, I guess,” he finally admits, glancing over to see Mitaka’s reaction.

Mitaka only frowns, eyes narrowing in concern. “What do you mean? The wedding?”

Hux sighs. “Any of it. The wedding. Me and Ben.” He takes a sip of his coffee, burns his tongue, and winces.

Mitaka is still giving him that same look, as though Hux has said something truly baffling. “But I thought…” He trails off. “What happened?”

Hux doesn’t answer for a moment, watching the flow of people in and out of the building behind them. Their indistinct voices mesh with the sound of traffic along South Dearborne, all but drowning out the scattered birdsong in the decorative cherry trees. A small flock of starlings breaks from a powerline, disappearing around the corner of the complex.

“I guess maybe we just got … caught up. With all the emotional stuff going on.” _Really eloquent answer, Hux_ , he thinks to himself.

“So you’re having doubts?” Mitaka asks. “Or he is?”

Hux’s chest twists. “Him, I think.” He looks at Mitaka and feels his own expression mold into something resolute. “I’m not. At all. I’d marry him in a second.”  That, he realizes after tasting the words on his tongue, is at least one truth in this charade.

Mitaka’s eyes are warm, though his smile still doesn’t quite reach them. “I’m sure he feels the same way, Armitage. How could he not? You’re ….” He pauses, looks down at his coffee cup. “...a really awesome guy,” he finishes lamely, cheeks slightly pink.

Hux feels a pang of sympathy, then thinks that perhaps he’s an ass for confiding in Mitaka, who clearly would have liked to be more than Hux’s friend. Hux picks through an assortment of possible replies, settles on “Thanks, Doph. You’re not so bad yourself.”

Mitaka doesn’t look at him, but he smiles. This one is genuine, Hux thinks. “So what happened today? With Ben?” he asks, neatly solving Hux’s dilemma of whether to continue talking about his relationship.

Hux shrugs. “I don’t know. He texted me and said we’re going on a date tonight, but I know he was out to lunch with his best friend, and he told her about us, and I’m sure she is going to tell him he’s an idiot because we’ve been friends for so long and we shouldn’t screw that up and I’m pretty sure he wants to go out tonight so he can break things off and …” Hux sucks in a breath, begins to say more, but then Mitaka is laughing. Hux clamps his mouth shut, eyes Mitaka sternly, then says: “ _What?”_

Mitaka rubs a hand over his smile, like he’s trying to wipe it away, but it’s ineffective. “I’m sorry. It’s just … you’re upset because your fiance said he wants to go out tonight. That’s like … I’d give anything for that.” He swallows some coffee, studies Hux’s expression, which is somewhere between amused and annoyed. “Sorry, I’m not trying to trivialize. Just um… maybe try to back up a little bit, before you decide the world is, you know, ending.”

“I don’t think I care for your tone,” Hux growls, but there is laughter bubbling in his throat and a smile tugging at his lips. Mitaka sees it.

“What else did he say?”

Hux mentally skims over the part where Ben had suggested he might want to talk to his mother. “He said to wear something sexy.”

“Okay, wow,” Mitaka laughs, tilting his head back and rolling his eyes. “I think you’re good.”

Mitaka’s amusement is contagious, and Hux feels some of his anxiety start to ebb away, the tight place in his chest unwinding and filling now with embarrassment and hope. “You really think so?” Of course Mitaka couldn’t know. He doesn’t have the whole picture. But Hux wants to hear it anyway.

Looking at him, Mitaka smirks. “The statistical probability is highly predictive of a number of potential outcomes for your night, and your fiance breaking up with you isn’t one of them.”

Hux has to look away, biting his bottom lip against a grin. He hadn’t expected to find Mitaka’s company so comforting, even if Hux is only feeding him half-truths. Hux visualizes himself briefly as a man flailing in the ocean, trying to grab onto anything at all to keep his head above water.

“I guess so,” he admits reluctantly.

Mitaka sits up straight, nudges Hux’s shoulder with his own. “You should take off early today. Go buy a new outfit or something. Try to relax.”

“I prefer to shop online,” Hux grouses, but the idea takes root the moment Mitaka’s suggestion makes him consider the contents of his closet. “But maybe I will.”

 

By the time he gets back to his desk, Hux is mentally checked out from his work day. He picks away at the code he’d started before the coffee break, having lost the thread of it, and is distracted by browsing his phone for high-end shops on his way home where he can find a nice shirt Ben hasn’t seen before. Maybe pick up some different cologne. He briefly considers lingerie, biting his lip at the idea of something black and lacy, but his face burns at the thought of finding out Ben had just been kidding about that part.

Three-thirty rolls around, and Hux powers down his computer at precisely the eight hour mark of his day. He slings his bag over his shoulder and hurries down the stairs and out the door. There’s a nervous energy flickering inside him, and it reminds him suddenly of the way he’d felt the fall of his senior year, when he’d gone to his one and only school dance. It had been his first date with a boy, and he’d been so consumed by anticipation and dread alike that he’d not eaten and made himself dizzy.

Pulling up the boutique he’d located on his phone, Hux sets Google maps to show him the route, and sets off in that direction. He’s pretty sure it’s not possible to buy confidence, but he can damn well try.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone that left a comment / kudo in the last chapter! You are all so encouraging and I love you!


	3. To The Bone

Hux is late getting home. He’d lost track of time trying to find a new dress shirt that didn’t make him look too pale, or clash with his hair, or make his neck look too thin. Eventually, the young sales associate had taken pity on him and offered her opinion that he looked “totally great” in mint green, and had convinced him he needed a navy blazer to round the look out. Hux, of course, already had one at home, but he’d been so grateful for the boost of confidence the girl’s enthusiasm had offered, even if it was probably ultimately self-serving, that he’d bought another just in case the older one had some sort of unanticipated flaw.

Shutting the door behind him, Hux thinks at first that he must have beaten Ben home, even though Ben is invariably like clockwork, home by five-thirty. But then Hux notices Ben’s umbrella is hanging from the coat rack; he’d taken it with him that morning for the thirty percent chance of rain.

The house is utterly quiet, all the lights off, and the tiny bells on Millicent’s collar seem alarmingly loud as she bounds down the hall to greet her human. She twines around his ankles, purring, and Hux sets aside his bags to reach down and scoop her up. 

“Where’s our Ben, Millie?” he asks her as he wanders down the hall. He peeks into both Ben’s bathroom and his bedroom, and the laundry room for good measure, and doesn’t find him there. When he reaches his— _ their— _ bedroom door, he stops.

Ben is stretched out on their bed in nothing but his boxers and a t-shirt, mouth open in deep sleep with his face nestled into Hux’s pillow. His hair looks damp, freshly washed from a shower no doubt, and Hux can hear the  _ plink _ of water against the faucet over the silence. Ben never shuts the tap off all the way. 

Hux sets Millie down gently and takes a few steps toward the bed, his first impulse to lie down beside him and hold him, but he knows Ben hasn’t been sleeping well. Hux suspects there is something about sharing a bed with another person that he’s having a hard time adjusting to, but Ben hasn’t brought it up, so Hux assumes he’ll work it out. 

It’s an effort to leave him there, though, because there is something achingly vulnerable about him in that moment that Hux needs to touch, to wrap his arms around to make sure that soft part of him stays safe. But he doesn’t want to wake him up, so he slips into the bathroom and shuts the door quietly. 

The night before, Hux had cleaned out one of the two drawers in his vanity, and had let Ben know it was available if he wanted to use it. It had still been empty this morning, and cracked open, but it’s closed now, and Hux curiously slides it out to peek inside. It’s silly, perhaps, to feel a flare of joy over a drawer full of grooming tools and hair ties, but they’re Ben’s, and it feels like affirmation. It’s especially reassuring after the debacle of the previous evening, which neither of them have addressed again since. As of this morning, their mutual sock drawer had still been in limbo, and the door to Ben’s room had been shut, and Hux had gotten what he thought was a fairly clear message, saying  _ I don’t want this.  _ Instead, maybe the message had been  _ let me do this at my own pace.  _

Hux pushes the drawer closed quietly. His fingers glide over the buttons of his shirt as he pushes the shower curtain back, and he can’t bite back a grin at the fact that Ben’s gargantuan bottles of salon shampoo and conditioner are sitting on the side of the tub. Since Hux hadn’t been here, Ben could have taken his shower in the other bathroom, but he’d taken the time to move his things in here. That has to mean something. 

Hux takes his time in the shower, letting Ben sleep. Massaging shampoo through his hair, he forces himself to picture only positive scenarios for their night, none of them involving a conversation about their fictitious relationship. Ben’s text had told him to wear something sexy, so perhaps they are going to a club. That thought makes Hux wonder if the blazer he’d planned to wear might be too formal. And maybe he should have bought those red lace panties he looked at rather shamelessly. But instead, it could be that they’re going to a nice dinner, or an art gallery, or a play, in which case perhaps he should have gotten a new tie that matched his shirt. _Why the hell hadn’t he considered that?_

Had he put this much thought into going out with Mitaka? Hux feels a twinge of guilt, realizing he’d barely given him a chance, and he probably hadn’t deserved Mitaka’s kindness this afternoon. It makes sense now, why nothing fit, why everything about that date had felt faulty. It was because Mitaka wasn’t Ben, and Hux didn’t want anyone else. Had Phasma known that would happen when she prodded him to go out with someone?

Hux’s fingers are starting to prune by the time he shuts the water off, and he steps out to grab his towel, and finds it isn’t there. Frowning, he searches the floor, looks in the hamper, but it’s well and truly gone, leaving him dripping on the bath mat with rivulets of water trickling down his spine. Sighing, Hux grabs the hand towel off its rack and dabs off with it, then opens the door to the bedroom again, scanning. Ben is still asleep, though he’s lying face down now, and there on the floor beside the bed is Hux’s towel.

They’ll have to talk about that one. 

Hux pads down the hall and rifles another towel out of the linen closet, rubbing his hair with it and wrapping it around his waist. After a second thought, he grabs two more and carries them back to the bedroom. Millicent is on the bed now, climbing onto the pillow beneath Ben’s head, which leads to one thing, in Hux’s experience. He almost moves to shoo her away, but decides Ben will just have to get used to feline idiosyncrasies and the dubiously charming experience of being a cat parent.

Condensation clings to the mirror, and Hux leaves the door ajar to let the steam from his shower clear. Rubbing lotion into his arms, he finds himself thinking of the text messages his mother has sent this week. It’s sweet that she seems to have adopted Ben so readily, though in all honesty that doesn’t surprise him; Aislain had always been so accommodating toward Hux’s friends, as though she was especially grateful of them and wanted to offer some sort of extra adhesive to keep them from straying out of Hux’s life. There had even been the time she’d made a behind the scenes deal with Mrs. O’Malley that she’d watch her son Bobby for free after school as long as he came home on the bus with eight-year-old Armitage and played with him. Hux hadn’t known about that one until he’d gotten upset at Bobby and refused to let him play with his Legos and the red-faced, indignant little boy and screamed at him and told Hux that he _weren’t nothing but a_ _backwoods hillbilly and an idjit and didn’t he know he only had to play with him because his momma said so?_

Aislain of course had denied that one, but Hux had overheard Brendol talking to her about it later that week, saying if Armitage wanted to run off the friends he did have they weren’t doing him any favors by buying him new ones. The next summer had been when his father started building the treehouse for him.

Hux sighs, wondering why he’s thinking of this now. Since returning to Georgia for the funeral, memories have been stirred up from his deep consciousness like silt from the bottom of a pond. Occasionally one surfaces, dredged up by some association that Hux isn’t always able to pinpoint;  Hux doesn’t consider introspection to be one of his strong suits. 

He sets down his bottle of lotion and reaches for his shaving cream, considering what he can possibly order in the way of space-savers and organizational products for the bathroom when Ben’s figure darkens the doorway. Hux catches his eye in the mirror, and Ben gives him a sleepy smile. His face is mottled red on one side from being pressed into the pillow, with the outline of a crease across the pinked edges of his scar. 

Ben loops his arm around Hux’s waist and steps against him to rest his chin on Hux’s shoulder, looking for all the world like a drowsy cat with heavy lidded eyes. 

“Did you sleep well?” Hux inquires of Ben’s reflection. 

“Mmmm.” Ben’s response is not particularly enlightening, but his lips are curved in a soft smile, and he nuzzles Hux’s ear affectionately, making tiny goosebumps rise over Hux’s arms. Hux can’t help thinking that those long, lonely years of having no friends as a child are probably an even trade for this.

“Why do cats sit on your head?” Ben murmurs, his yawn a gust of warm air against Hux’s neck. 

Hux reaches up with his free hand, shaving cream pooled in the other, and rubs the back of Ben’s head, fingers threading through his hair. “Because it’s warm.”

Ben turns his head into Hux’s touch, arm reflexively tightening around Hux’s waist. “My head is not warm.” 

Hux snorts, smiling. “You’re a furnace.” He pats Ben’s arm, shifting toward the sink. Ben lets him go and turns to lean against the counter. It crowds Hux a bit, but he doesn’t say anything as he lathers on his shaving cream. “How was your day?”

One of Ben’s shoulders lifts and falls. “They want me to go to California in October for a couple of weeks.”

The razor pauses against Hux’s cheek, resumes. “Will you be back before my birthday?” Of course his first response to that was self-centered. “It’s just I was thinking of having Donnie up, because Halloween is that weekend, and…”

“It’s just the first two weeks. I’ll be back before that.” Ben catches his eye and gives him a small smile. 

Hux realizes that he’s always felt a pang of emptiness when Ben’s job sent him out of town, as it did a few times a year, though at the moment it feels magnified. Time apart from Ben, even the eight hours they spend separated by work, for some reason seems to Hux like an opportunity for Ben gain perspective without Hux as a distraction, and to realize he’s making a mistake. Hux dimly recognizes that there is something a bit desperate about that.

“I’ll miss you,” he croaks, then clears his throat, glad that the skin of his face is already reddened by heat and shaving. He’s afraid Ben will be able to hear how afraid he is that this would all ultimately end, that it’s all just a matter of time.

Ben reaches out and traces a finger down Hux’s side, and Hux has to force himself not to flinch from the light, tickling touch. “Maybe we can Skype or something,” Ben suggests, and then adopts a devilish smirk. “You can do a strip tease for me.” 

“Ha!” Hux sets his razor down, turns on the tap to splash water on his face. “I actually have a routine to Britney Spears. I’ve been saving it for our honeymoon.” On second thought, perhaps he shouldn’t have said that about the honeymoon, but Hux is invested to the bone, wisdom be damned.

Ben only laughs, picking up a random bottle from the counter and examining it as Hux dabs his face with a towel. “Anti-aging cream,” Ben reads. “Hux, you’re only thirty-four.” 

Hux plucks the bottle out of Ben’s hand, opens it. “Yes, and I plan to stay that way.” He smooths on a layer as Ben picks up another bottle.

“Eye illuminator with mica particles and powerful hydrators…” He raises an eyebrow. “That sounds like a mutant power.”

This forces a bark of laughter from Hux. “It keeps me from looking perpetually tired.”

Ben glances at him, expression dubious, but he sets it down and picks up another tube. Hux feels a twinge of irritation, as things are not being returned to their specified location, but he says nothing.

“Dark spot corrector cream?” 

“Reduces the likelihood of freckles,” Hux explains, and then gapes in horror when Ben turns at the waist to drop the tube into the trash. “Ben! That’s expensive.” 

Ben dusts his hands. “You don’t need that.” He leans over and kisses Hux’s unmarred cheek, then his shoulder, where Hux has irregular bursts of damnable freckles dotting his pale skin. “Your freckles are cute.”

Hux snorts, leaning around Ben to make a dive for the trash can, but Ben catches him and pulls him flush against his torso. Hux feels the towel around his waist loosen, start to dip lower in the back. Then Ben’s hand forces it further off his hips as he slides it beneath the fabric and trails two fingers down Hux’s cleft. Hux shivers and flushes, stomach fluttering. 

“Ben,” he admonishes, voice raspy. “If you don’t behave we are going to end up in bed.” Even as he says it, Hux’s hips rock forward, his body wanting it even if his mind has other plans. Ben groans softly and meets the thrust, dipping his head to mouth at Hux’s jaw, his neck. Hux squirms. “Come on. I got something nice to wear.”

Ben doesn’t let him go immediately, circling him with the other arm now, and the towel drops to the floor. Hux can feel Ben’s cock stir where it’s pressed against his hip, and Hux almost snakes his arms around Ben’s neck and decides  _ to hell with it _ because it’s rare so far for Ben to initiate things this way. But then Ben stops, releases Hux with a firm, smiling kiss against his lips.

“I’ll go get ready,” he says, and Hux steps out of his way, bemused. He watches Ben’s reflection in the mirror until he can’t see him anymore, then lets out a shuddering breath that only marginally expels his desire. It’s startling, how easy it is for Ben to coax feeling from him, as though he knows exactly which keys to press to strike any chord. 

Leaning down, Hux rescues his skin lightening cream from the waste bin, regarding it. Hux thinks that he has a reasonable sense of self-esteem when it comes to his appearance, but he’s always put a lot of care into maximizing what he thinks are his strong points. He’s always thought he looked rather absurd with facial hair, but Ben had loved it when Hux had let it grow in while in Georgia, constantly nosing it until Hux had shaved it off before returning to work. Hux thinks he’s skinny and not well-apportioned, but Ben likes to call him delicate, and Hux likes it, for some reason. 

Now Ben accuses his freckles of being cute, while Hux has always hated them. It’s like Ben is slowly showing Hux another angle by which to see perceived flaws, and it’s intoxicating, and Ben’s opinion of him is starting to feel like the only one—aside from his own—that matters. 

He lets the tube slip from his fingers, back into the trash, and goes to get dressed. 

 

* * *

 

If Ben had imagined there would be this many people crammed into this small of a space, he absolutely would have tried to come up with another viable option for the evening. Technically, he supposes, the place isn’t that small; it’s spacious enough for a stage and a score or so burnished wooden tables, but the fact that all of those tables are full, and people are clustered in the walk ways, and lined up at least three deep at the bar, make it seem  _ so. much. smaller. _

He feels fingers brush the side of his thigh, a light, questioning touch, and he glances at Hux. 

“You okay?” Hux asks, though Ben barely hears him above the din: saxophone and drums; glasses clinking; chairs scraping; so many voices.

“I’m good,” Ben promises, as much to himself as to Hux, and leans over to press a kiss to the side of Hux’s forehead rather than attempt to smile. 

They’ve been standing near the wall for ten minutes, waiting for someone to vacate a table. Ben dislikes everything about it, but he’d seen Hux light up at the sound of the music and so Ben would tolerate it. If they could just…sit down…where people would stop jostling his shoulder as they walked by...he might even be able to relax enough to enjoy himself. 

“I’m going to go get us some drinks,” Hux half-shouts, and Ben nods, wondering if his discomfort is so plain that Hux knew better than to ask him to make that trip to the bar with him. 

Ben watches him weave through the scattered tables, but doesn’t allow himself to remain too distracted in his vigil; there’s a small round table in the back of the room that Ben has marked. The occupants’ glasses are empty, and they’d just waved away the server. The woman is reapplying her lipstick in the mirror of a small black compact. The man’s wallet is on the table. 

A wellspring of worry blooms in his chest, thinking how easily Hux seems to acclimate to this type of environment, and recalling that Phasma had met him in a club. Is this really what he likes? If Ben had been forced to pick somewhere without Phasma’s guidance, they most likely would have gone to a movie and sat in the back row, closest to the door, or gone to some little dive where they could nestle into a cozy booth in a corner and actually be able to hear each other. Ben supposes Phasma has some insight into this sort of thing, however, where Ben’s experience with dating is sadly lacking.

He catches a glimpse of Hux leaning in to the bar, his red hair easy to pick out in the golden glow of the backlight behind the counter. Ben wonders if Hux has noticed that he has no idea what he’s doing, that he feels like a fish out of water, that everything from buying groceries together to sex feels like a dance he doesn’t know the steps to.

There had been others, boys his age when he was in high school, a few half-drunk encounters in an unfamiliar room at a party, once the locked bathroom of a convenience store, his own too-small bed one time when his parents had been out of town. But none of them have faces. Just one person commands vivid memories, and Ben can’t allow himself to think of that as experience. Doesn’t want to. He wants it to be a thing that happened to someone else, someone he left behind when he fled his hometown for the military.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the woman at the table he’d marked stand, shoulder her bag, and Ben starts to drift as casually as possible in that direction, at the same time trying to assess Hux’s position. While he can’t catch a glimpse of him as the couple vacating the table passes, Ben is able to plant a knee into the still-warm seat before anyone else claims it. 

The relief he feels is palpable, as though he’s been treading water in a storm-tossed ocean and has just clawed his way into a lifeboat. He grips the back of the chair as he balances on his knee, high enough to see over the heads of the other patrons seated around them. Finally, he catches Hux’s eye, and waves at him, Hux’s answering smile easing the tension in his muscles. When Hux finally slides into the chair across from him, Ben sinks down into his own seat and finally feels like he can breathe again. 

The table is littered with debris from the couple they have replaced: two glasses with melting ice, sweating on the polished wood, rings of condensation, an empty, crushed cigarette package spilling flecks of tobacco, a bowl with three green olives. It all surrounds a small candle guttering in a glass enclosure.

Hux gingerly reaches over and sets Ben’s drink down in front of him, and Ben can tell he’s trying not to make a face. “So, how did you find this place?” Hux asks. The tables are smallish, which Ben suspects is so the people sitting around them can hear one another. 

Ben’s first impulse is to devise some tale that will make him seem like an exciting person, but lying feels wrong. “Phasma. Apparently she likes this…um, jazz.”

Hux openly smirks now, taking a sip of his drink. “You hate it, don’t you?”

Ben’s cheeks flare with heat; he’d been trying his best to appear like this was his idea, and yet Hux had seen right through him. “Phasma said you’d like it.”

Hux’s smirk slips, replaced with something softer. He nudges a glass aside, lays his hand on the table with his palm up, inviting. He wiggles his fingers when Ben doesn’t respond immediately, and Ben lifts his own hand from his lap, laying it Hux’s. 

“I love it,” Hux says, squeezing Ben’s fingers. “And I love you for bringing me here.” 

Ben gives him a tentative smile, and then is startled out of responding by the appearance of their server. Both he and Hux snatch their hands back, as though they’d just been caught doing something they weren’t supposed to be.

“Hi guys,” the girl chirps, giving them a bright, toothy smile. She’s wearing a white button down tucked into a black pencil skirt, black tights, and there’s a white rag draped over her wrist. It quickly lands on the table as she starts gathering up the dishes. “You two want a couple of menus?” 

“Please,” Hux answers, shifting back from the table as the server wipes loose tobacco off onto the floor. 

“Not a problem,” she says, deftly manipulating everything off the table and leaving it damp and clean. “I’ll be right back. Good on drinks?” 

“Another round, please,” Hux says. “Glenlivit.”

“You got it.” She smiles again and bustles away. 

Ben finds himself smiling at Hux, realizing he rather enjoys him taking the lead; it makes Ben feel like he can just relax and let things happen, instead of having to worry about saying or doing the wrong thing. “Phasma said you would like the whiskey bar.”

Hux’s eyes sparkle. “Sending the Irishman somewhere with whiskey is usually a safe bet.” He puts both elbows on the table and leans forward, holding his glass between his hands. “Do you even like jazz?”

Ben leans forward as well, folding his arms on the table, smiling. “Will you break up with me if I say no? Phasma says it’s a requirement if you want romance in your life.”

The toe of Hux’s shoe brushes Ben’s foot, then his calf, in a soft caress. “We’ve done okay without it so far, haven’t we?”

“Have we?” Ben asks, truly wanting to know if he is somehow managing to make Hux happy, and is confused when Hux’s brow creases. Before he can ask what is wrong, their server reappears, and they are leaning away from each other again as she sets a menu in front of them. 

“You two came on a great night. This band is one of my favorites,” she tells them cheerfully, reaching to the center of the table to pick up the glass enclosure surrounding the candle. She leans in and blows it out, replaces it with a fresh one, which she lights. “You guys celebrating anything special?” she asks, setting the glass back over the candle, glancing between them with a smile. 

“We just got engaged,” Ben says, blurting it out before he even thinks about it. He feels Hux staring at him.

Their server beams at this, setting a congratulatory hand on both their shoulders. Ben flinches, but she doesn’t appear to notice. “Congratulations! That next round of drinks is on me, okay?” 

“Thank you, but that isn’t neces—” Hux begins, but she interrupts him to say she’ll be right back, and then she is walking toward the service bar.

Ben watches her walk away longer than is strictly necessary, before looking slowly back to Hux. He finds Hux watching him, his face unreadable. Ben plasters on a smile, not knowing what to say. It seems that Hux doesn’t either, and instead of speaking he drains the rest of his whiskey, watching Ben with round green eyes the whole while, as though waiting for the punchline. Ben takes a swallow of his whiskey as well, shifts in his chair.  _ Fucking war was easier than this. _

Finally, Hux throws him a line, reaching out again for Ben’s hand, which Ben gives him gratefully. “You know,” Hux muses, rubbing a circle on Ben’s hand with his thumb. “You still haven’t gotten me a ring.” 

Ben answers with a small huff of laughter. “I didn’t know…men did that. For engagements, at least.” He doesn’t mention to Hux that he’d thought about it, had tried to look it up online during a break at work this week, and been overwhelmed by stories of dramatic, elaborate marriage proposals. 

Hux’s smile slips, and he is watching their hands. “Did you ever text my mother?” 

Ben can’t tell from his tone what Hux wants to hear, but he doesn’t sound happy. “I told her hello, and I’d think about it.”

Hux nods, still not looking up. “But you told Phasma.”

Ben’s eyes narrow in confusion at Hux’s dour demeanor. “I mean, she knows we’re not really engaged. She…knows both of us. I couldn’t lie to her.” 

Hux says nothing for a moment, then pulls his hand back and sits up straight. There is a moment of distraction as their server drops off their drinks and takes their food order, and then Ben leans closer to Hux over the table. Hux is watching the band on the stage, his expression neutral. 

“Hux,” Ben implores, feeling like he’s sliding off a mountain and can’t find anything to hold onto. “What’s wrong? Did you not want me to tell Phasma?” 

Hux looks at him, shakes his head and smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “It’s fine, Ben. You’re right, we couldn’t have fooled her.”

“We fooled everyone else,” Ben argues, though he hears the note of doubt in his own voice. He doesn’t know what he’s arguing for. Carrying on with this, pretending they are engaged? Actually planning to ride this wave of denial all the way back to Georgia in eleven months and find themselves legally bound to one another? Some part of Ben wants that, but an even greater part of him is terrified of he and Hux becoming like his parents, of Hux regretting it, of Hux leaving him when he digs up Ben’s demons. And he will, if they are together long enough, because they are there, just below the surface.

Then Hux takes his hand again, squeezes it. “Let’s talk about something else, okay? We can think of something to tell my mother later. I can at least enjoy being your boyfriend.” 

“Hux…” Ben starts, wanting to tell him that there isn’t a word that encompasses what Hux is to him, that he’s so much more than that, but Hux looks away, toward the stage as another song starts up, smoky and haunting.

“We should go dance.” Hux’s eyes are bright at that, and despite thinking he’s abysmal at it, Ben lets Hux lead him to the dance floor in front of the stage, where Hux loops his arms around Ben’s neck and sways with the music.

 

They don’t talk any more about being engaged, or not engaged, and Hux’s mood gradually lifts in proportion to the number of whiskeys he consumes. His chair ends up shifting around the table next to Ben’s, where they hold hands as Hux tells him how he used to play the trumpet and be in marching band, making Ben laugh with tales of band camp. In turn, Ben tells him about his high school punk band, The Knights of Ren, and how they practiced in Ben’s garage and wrote bad versions of popular songs, and how Ben had had such a crush on their drummer.  

It’s much easier, just letting it go, just relaxing into their natural camaraderie and chemistry, and by the time they make it home, and Hux’s hands are untucking Ben’s shirt before they even close the door; Ben’s inhibitions are gone. 

He kicks the door shut, lips still on Hux’s, whose mouth sweet with the taste of liquor and sugar from dessert at the club. Ben’s ears are still ringing from the decibel level, and from the blood rushing through his limbs as he tugs Hux’s belt buckle open. 

Clothes fall where they are discarded: shoes by the door, blazer draped on a bar stool, shirt in the hallway, slacks pooled in the doorway of their bedroom. Hux touches him the entire way, seeming to need the contact of a hand on Ben’s hip, lips pressed together, arms around his neck, and while this sort of desperate neediness has overwhelmed Ben before, he’s aching for it now. Needs affirmation. Needs to know Hux is his.

Ben works him open, and his soft whimpers and the way he writhes on Ben’s hand and begs for more, urges Ben not to take care, but to have him now, hard. But even as he thinks it, the fog of arousal clears and he remembers the night before, sees the bruise on Hux’s neck, and he won’t do that again. 

He slides his fingers out, kissing the swell of Hux’s collarbone. He sits up, back against the bed frame, pulling a willing Hux into his lap. He wants Hux in control, Hux to set the pace, wants to see into his eyes and know there isn’t pain there, that he wants this and wants Ben. It’s a role Hux sinks into easily, lowering himself onto Ben and rocking his hips, eyes lidded as the frame of the bed thumps against the wall in rhythm. 

Ben comes first, too far gone with watching Hux’s flushed, sweat-slick body take his pleasure from him, doesn’t want him to stop, but can’t help wincing as he aftershocks of his climax fade and he’s suddenly oversensitive. Hux makes a low noise, kisses Ben’s neck, and slides off him.

“Where are you going?” Ben asks, voice husky and sated. “You don’t have to stop.” He’s still hard, will be for long enough to bring Hux off. 

Hux settles between Ben’s open legs, running a hand down the inside of Ben’s thigh. The other hand is lazily stroking his own cock, and he kisses Ben’s knee. “I was thinking maybe we could do something a little different,” Hux suggests, his eyes lust dark, looking languid and feline. 

“Like what?” Ben asks, nudging Hux with his knee affectionately. 

Hux fingers trail further down Ben’s leg, caress his balls, making Ben groan. One finger slides down, tickling along Ben’s cleft, presses in against his entrance. It’s only a suggestive touch, but Ben flinches. He shifts farther up, away.

“What do you want to try?” he asks, not liking the way just that touch makes his heart hammer, his cock flag.

Hux doesn’t seem to have noticed, still caught in his fantasy. “Me, inside you.” Hux strokes his hand down Ben’s thigh again. Ben catches it, holds it still.

“No.” The word is out Ben’s mouth without any consideration, his stomach churning. 

Hux’s hazy eyes clear, perhaps at the tone of Ben’s declaration or the pressure of Ben’s hand around his wrist. He blinks. “You don’t like that, then? Or just never—”

“I just…no.” Ben repeats, releasing Hux’s wrist and bringing his knees together, wrapping arms around them. He feels his vision wanting to go dark at the edges, his face burning. He can’t look at Hux, concentrates on the aquarium that stands beside the door, casting a flickering blue glow across them.

“Are you okay?” Hux asks, all hint of arousal having vanished from his voice. When Ben glances at him he sees that Hux’s erection is gone, and his face is pinched in concern, and Ben feels like he’s ruined something. 

“I’m sorry. I can…we can do something else? I’m sorry you didn’t—” 

“It’s okay, Ben.” Hux leans in to kiss him, and Ben is too slow to react and doesn’t return it. He grabs for Hux when he starts to back away, touching their foreheads together. 

“It’s not you,” Ben tries to tell him, but Hux makes a shushing noise. 

“You don’t need to explain why you don’t want to do something, Ben. No is enough.”

Ben draws in a shaky breath, feeling his muscles shudder as he expels it, not enough to relieve the tension that has him wound like a spring. A feeling of incredible guilt washes over him, settling in the pit of his stomach. “Can we just go to bed?”

Hux nods, kissing his forehead, and helps him turn the covers down before going to wash off. Ben lies on his side, miserable, wondering how the fuck this night could have ended up this way. It seems like everything is perpetually balanced on a knife edge, one wrong step on his part enough to sever things. 

Hux slips underneath the blankets with him a few minutes later, but Ben is too deep inside his own head to say anything. Hux seems to sense that now is not a good time to talk, and he wraps his arm around Ben’s waist and pulls Ben close. 

It’s a long time before either of them fall asleep.

  
  


_ The man is older, larger than life, towering over him, long skeletal fingers, cold and too soft, cradling the back of Ben’s neck. They are looking out the window, and there should be a lawn there, with green rolling hills, but there is just fog, undulating like a living thing. That man is speaking, in a hushed voice, lulling words that tempt Ben to believe he has value, promising him that he cares for him, telling him that his parents and teachers don’t appreciate him, only Ben can tell his mutterings are false.  _

_ Ben looks down at his hands, and sees they are not the hands of a man, but those of a boy, gangly and untested. Blood is trickling down his fingers, dripping into a pool on the floor, and he sees the reflection there of the man standing over him. A handsome face withers, turns gaunt, skin turning to ashen gray and peeling away until all that gapes back at him are the hollow, dark eye sockets. _

_ Then the hand on his neck is squeezing, pushing him down, wanting him to drown. Ben tries to speak, to object, but his throat is too tight, and he can’t breathe. Can’t breathe, can’t… _

 

“Ben!” The voice is familiar, wrenching him out of the dream, and Ben takes a huge, gasping breath, slapping blindly at the hand on his shoulder, the one he's afraid is reaching for his neck. He rolls, trying to get away, foot tangled in the blankets, tilts over the edge of the bed and struggles free. His heart is hammering so hard it makes his bones hurt, and he can’t breathe, and his vision has tunneled and all he can see are his feet, and he’s making them move, one in front of the other, away. 

The voice behind him says “Ben” again, but he can’t heed it. He stumbles down the hall and through the door of his bathroom, and shoves it closed, pressing his whole trembling body against it to block out…what?

There’s nothing out there. He carries it with him, no matter how hard he’s tried to put it behind him. The same voice that used to whisper praise now echoes in his ears, revealing the truth as it had years ago. Ben is  _ pathetic, weak, useless, will never have a place in this world. _

Ben lifts a still-shaking hand to flick on the light, wincing when he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror. His eyes are wide and dark, and his face too pale. Everything is wrong with his reflection: nose not straight, broken in one too many fights, ears too big, scar livid across his cheek, reminding him every day of how many others had died when it should have been him. But he is too fucking pathetic to even do that right. And now Hux knows. He must know. 

_ Ben Solo is weak _ .

His fist connects with the mirror and it shatters, spiderwebbing out around his hand, leaving blood smeared in the cracks when he pulls it away, but Ben doesn’t feel it. He hits it again and pieces of the mirror break free, falling to the sink, the floor. 

His hand is burning now, pain lancing up his arm, nerves screaming from the abuse, and that, more than anything else, more than Hux’s voice at the door, brings him back to himself. Then he is trembling again, not from panic this time, but from the intense backwash as the panic and rage are sucked out of him, leaving only horror and shame in its wake.

Ben is too shaken to protest when Hux pushes the door open, and he can’t look at him. He sees only shifting impressions of color in the broken mirror, a thousand reflections of red hair, himself splintered beyond recognition. 

There’s a sharp intake of breath, and Ben flinches. He wants to bolt when Hux touches him, but all he can manage is to back along the wall. A firm hand around his upper arm stops him. 

“Let’s get your hand wrapped up, okay?” Hux’s voice is gentle, pitched low, like Ben is a skittish animal, or predatory and unpredictable.

Ben doesn’t remember Hux winding a towel around his hand, but when he looks down, it’s soaked through with red. He allows Hux to lead him to the master bath and clean his hand, and only when Hux is wrapping a bandage around it is Ben able to speak.

His voice is little more than a harsh whisper, as though he’s been screaming for hours. “I’m sorry.”

Hux doesn’t look up from his work. “How are you feeling? Should you take one of your pills?” 

Ben doesn’t want one, because he hates the way they make him feel, but he doesn’t want Hux to see any more of this, so he nods. Somehow, Hux knows where they are, because he ties off the bandage, leaves Ben sitting on the edge of the tub, and returns a moment later with a Xanax and a glass of water. 

“Let’s go back to bed,” Hux says, rubbing a circle between Ben’s shoulder blades, his touch sure and comforting. 

Ben looks at him fully for the first time since he’d woken up from that dream, expecting to see disappointment or pity. Hux only looks concerned. Maybe a little sad.

“Don’t you want to…talk?” Ben asks, feeling like if this is the end, he’d like to get it over with. 

Hux runs his fingers through Ben’s tangled hair. “If you have something you want to talk about right now, we can. Otherwise it can wait until tomorrow, when you feel better.”

It feels false, this understanding Hux is displaying. But Ben nods, because he’s too drained to do anything else. 

Hux won’t leave the bathroom until Ben does, and then he follows him out, shutting off the light. Ben stops at the foot of the bed, seeing the blankets twisted and dragged into the floor. Millicent is hiding in the open closet, her green eyes luminous and wary. For some reason, the cat being afraid of him now is like being punched in the gut. 

“I’m going to sleep in the other room,” Ben says, not waiting for Hux to object before he walks out. He already knows he won’t sleep. 

Might never sleep again after this.

  
  


* * *

 

 

Hux tosses and turns for an hour, going over and over in his head what had happened tonight. Ben had obviously had some sort of nightmare, related to his time as a soldier perhaps. Hux knows that PTSD can work that way, had read about it after Ben had moved in. He’d known the dreams could be insidious, and they’ve just been lucky so far when they've slept together. 

He rolls onto his side, staring at the clock. It’s three-thirty a.m. He watches the time tick away until three-forty, and finally decides he has to check on Ben. Slipping out of bed, he pads silently out of the room, and then pulls up short when he sees Ben’s door is closed. He takes a few steps closer, considering if he should honor Ben’s bid for privacy, or assuage his own worry and make sure he’s okay. 

Then he sees that the door isn’t actually closed, just pushed short of latching, so Hux nudges it open a crack, peering inside. It’s dark, and all he can see is the indistinct shape of Ben in the bed. Hux whispers his name, then says it a bit louder, but Ben doesn’t respond. 

Hux pushes the door open enough to let himself in, and walks over to the bed. Very gingerly, he sits down on the edge of it, reaching out and touching Ben’s arm. It’s probably a bad idea, and might result in something very quickly negative, but Ben doesn’t move. Hux can see the rise and fall of his torso beneath the blankets, and can tell he’s not asleep.

It makes Hux ache, to think Ben has been lying in here, alone, awake, this whole time, while Hux has been doing the same thing in the next room. This isn’t what being together is supposed to be about. 

Turning back the blankets, Hux lies down behind Ben, fits himself against his back. Ben doesn’t try to move away, which Hux takes as acceptance, so he nestles close and presses a kiss to the back of Ben’s neck. 

Hux doesn’t hear Ben crying, but he feels it where their bodies meet. A tremor that doesn’t stop for a long time.

  
  
  
  



	4. How To Soothe A Nameless Beast

 

Morning is a gray smudge behind the drawn curtains, the drab light barely filtering through to stain the wall and paint a thin line on the carpet. It’s not enough to tell what time it is, and Hux can’t exactly say when night had given way to dawn, which tells him that at some point, he must have slept. Though he doesn’t feel like it. Every time Ben had shifted in the bed beside him, it had rattled Hux into consciousness with a stinging lance of concern; even having his arm wrapped around Ben’s waist, having him tucked against his side, had not been enough of a comfort.

Hux smoothes his hand along the curve of Ben’s arm, kneads the slumped shoulder muscle, trails fingers down his torso. Ben’s skin is chilly to the touch, prickled with raised gooseflesh, and Hux lifts his head from the warm crook of Ben’s neck to see that sometime in the night Ben had kicked the covers off, leaving them bunched between their legs halfway down the bed.

Levering himself up on one arm, Hux reaches down and tugs at the sheet, untangling it and draping it back over Ben, followed by the goose-down comforter that Hux had given Ben the first Christmas they’d been roommates. The duvet cover is wine-red satin, soft to the touch, and Hux had thought at the time that maybe it would help Ben sleep. But maybe it had never made a difference.

He presses a kiss to the hollow at the base of Ben’s skull, breathing in the faint hint of tea tree shampoo and sweat, and he gathers Ben against him again, his hand coming to rest in the dip just below his sternum. Ben’s heart is a steady thrum, and Hux closes his eyes and presses his cheek along the taper of Ben’s neck, feeling his pulse throughout and letting that soothe him. He’s almost drifted once more into some half-conscious parody of sleep when Ben stirs, and Hux comes online again, senses alight in anticipation. Of what, he’s not sure.

Ben’s hand finds his beneath the blankets, fingers splaying over Hux’s, a light touch trickling over his wrist and down his forearm as though Ben is trying to discern who is holding him. His hand comes to rest in the crook of Hux’s elbow, and Hux feels him inhale, back expanding against his chest, breath whistling out in a sigh. Then Ben nudges Hux’s arm, prompting him to lift it enough for Ben to roll over.

They are settled on the same pillow, faces inches apart, and Hux can see the tiny veins feeding into the purplish bruised skin beneath Ben’s eyes, making the brown irises stand out even more behind his dark lashes. His skin is waxen pale, ghostlike, and a deep crease forms between his eyebrows.

Hux can almost hear the apology reverberating in the air between them, and waylays it before Ben can give it voice. “Good morning, beautiful,” Hux hums.

This makes Ben snort softly, open mouth closing around unspoken words, and he leans in to lay his nose alongside Hux’s, touching their foreheads together. Hux cards a hand through Ben’s tangled hair, gently working through snarls to massage his scalp.

“How are you feeling?” Hux asks at last, smoothing dark locks behind Ben’s ear.

“Like shit,” Ben admits, and he flexes his bandaged hand where it lies atop the duvet, loosely resting against Hux’s hip.

Hux turns his head and glances at the bandaged knuckles, seeing faint blotches of red across the ridge. “Are you hurting?”

“Some. I deserve it though.” Ben sighs, turns his face into the pillow. Hux can see the tip of his ear is pink. “Hux, I don’t know what happened last night. I’m sorry.” His voice is muffled by the down filling.

Hux lets that statement linger for a moment, considers letting it go at that, but has a feeling there is more to it. That what had happened the night before was the tip of some massive iceberg that needed to be mapped. “What was your dream about?” he asks cautiously, aware that it could be the wrong question, but determined to draw Ben out.  

Ben says nothing for a long moment, and so Hux adds: “You can trust me, you know.”

“It was…nothing,” Ben assures him, dipping his head farther until the crown of his head rests below Hux’s chin.

Hux doesn’t believe him. It had quite obviously been _something_ , as Ben had been struggling in his sleep, saying _stop_ , and then put his fist through a mirror. “What aren’t you telling me, Ben?” He tries to keep his voice level, remove any hint of accusation from it.

“I just haven’t been sleeping well,” Ben deflects, his rather obvious statement tinged with residual feeling that Hux can’t quite place. Snappish, almost, which begs to confirm Hux’s assumption, that there is a key to some dark place in that dream that Ben does not want to turn.

“I need you to talk to me,” Hux insists, determined not to let Ben slip away so easily. He hesitates a moment, then adds: “You scared the shit out of me last night.” Hux remembers the way Ben’s eyes had been distant, seeing something beyond the veil, how he hadn’t even seemed to notice the blood streaming down his fingers. Hux had read about shell-shock, the trauma-induced fugue that robbed soldiers of language and reason, and when he’d guided Ben out of that bathroom the night before, that is what he’d seen. The walking dead.

Ben turns his face up now, and Hux sees that his admission, that he’d been afraid the night before, has struck a nerve. Ben lifts his gauze-wrapped hand to Hux’s face, careful only to touch him with the pad of his thumb, tracing the cheekbone. His eyelids are heavy over mournful eyes.

“I’m sorry I scared you,” Ben whispers, his voice thick. “I just…I try to get past things that have…that I’ve seen, and usually I can, but sometimes I dream about it. It’s worse when I’m anxious.”

Hux nods, as anxiety, at least, is something that he can understand. “What would make it better?”

Ben drops his hand from Hux’s cheek to the hollow between their bodies, and he looks down, shaking his head. “I don’t know. Time, maybe.”

Meddling with time is not a skill that Hux possesses, so he tries another tactic. “Why haven’t you been sleeping well?”

“It happens sometimes,” Ben says dismissively, and rolls over, away from Hux. He throws back the blankets and sits up, bracing himself with hands on the edge of the mattress, shoulders hunched and head bowed. Hux sits up as well, the blankets puddling in his lap, and stretches his arm out to touch Ben, but before his fingers meet skin, Ben pushes himself up and circles the bed for the door.

Hux almost lets him go, but a last minute surge of indignance prompts him to speak. “I’m trying to talk to you, Ben. I’d appreciate it if you reciprocated.”  

Ben freezes in the doorway, one hand on the frame, and his shoulders rise and then fall, betraying resignation. He turns his head partway and looks at Hux, his brow furrowed and lips tucked into a frown, and Hux winds his hand into the sheet to keep from digging his nails into his palm. He can’t shake the feeling that he’s pushing buttons on a bomb, hoping to disarm it but knowing it could very well blow up in his face.

Ben stays in the doorway, but he faces Hux slowly, crossing his arms and leaning into the wall. He doesn’t ask Hux what he wants to talk about, but waits for him to speak with an apprehensive expression, like he’s on the verge of flinching.

Hux suddenly doesn’t know what to say, now that he has center stage; there are a score of things he wants to ask, but part of him can’t reconcile social prudence and the level of familiarity he should be able to enjoy with the man he’s sleeping with. While he’s known Ben for years, they’ve only been a couple for a few weeks, which feels inexplicably like the clock has been reset and he must get to know Ben all over again.

Hux runs a hand through his hair, though it’s far too long and flutters back into his face. “Was last night a, um…PTSD thing?” It’s a woefully inadequate question, but it’s something. A start.

Ben’s head droops as he looks at the floor, shame resonating in his posture. “Probably,” he says, one shoulder lifting in a tiny shrug.

Squeezing the sheet in his fingers, Hux swallows the impulse to sigh. He feels like a novice given a hammer and chisel and told to sculpt _The Pieta_ without a reference. “Can you elaborate on that?” _Can you speak more than three words at a time?_

The expression Ben turns on him is just shy of pleading, and he wraps his arms more tightly around himself, fingers making white spots over the tattoo on his bicep. “I don’t know how to elaborate on it, Hux. Other than it’s like being possessed. I don’t remember getting out of bed, I don’t remember walking to the bathroom, or what I was thinking when I was in there. The first image I have after going to bed last night is seeing that towel around my hand and realizing I was bleeding.”

Hux swallows, feeling second-hand anxiety; he’s had panic attacks before after which he couldn’t remember what he said, but he’d never blacked out entire events, or lost control of himself to the effect of shattering a mirror with his fist. He doesn’t want to ask the next question on his mind, but he forces himself to.

“Has the thing with the mirror…has that ever happened with a person?” Hux can’t help replaying something Ben had said their first time together about _not wanting to hurt him_ , and considering the fierce, near savage sex they’d had Thursday night.

Ben’s eyes go round at the implication, however, and Hux thinks they glisten before Ben blinks and scrubs a palm over his face. He drops the hand to his side, and now his expression is dark. “You mean have I ever hurt anyone? Yes, Hux, I have. I’ve actually killed people. Violently. But that was my job. I used to have an outlet for this shit, and now I don’t. Now all I have is the gym and a strict fucking schedule that has completely gone to hell and bullshit therapy where all the asshole wants to talk about are my parents and fucking mindfulness.” Ben’s voice rises in pitch toward the end, biting off the last word before sucking in a lungful of air and turning his face away from Hux, toward the wall.

Hux is momentarily taken aback by the vehemence of Ben’s words, realizing he’s struck a nerve but not sure which, or how many. Part of him wants to leave off this entire conversation, go back to avoiding the near insurmountable task of _talking_ , but if he does, all he will do is extrapolate Ben’s hypothetical meaning and draw possibly far worse conclusions.

Hux smooths the blankets over his thighs, fidgeting with the edge of the sheet while he tries to think of a tactful way to word his question. “When you say…an outlet. What does that mean?”

Ben is just visible out of the corner of Hux’s eye, and Hux can see that he turns to look at him again, eyes boring into Hux’s downturned face until he pulls Hux’s gaze.

“For anxiety, Hux. For anger. For all the fucking emotions I don’t have room for or know what else to do with. What did you think I meant?” Ben raises both eyebrows, and the gesture manages to look like a challenge. Like he’s daring Hux to offer a different interpretation of what thing he might be suppressing doing the work of a soldier.

“I didn’t know,” Hux deflects. “That’s why I asked.” He throws the sheets aside and slips out of bed, walking barefoot across the room to where Ben hovers still in the doorway. He reaches out to touch him, and Ben rocks back on his heels. Hux drops his hand to his side. “Is it something I’ve done then?” Hux asks instead. “Are you anxious because you want to break this off with me and don’t know how? Because if you do…”

“Hux,” Ben interrupts, his name coming out like an exasperated sigh, and Ben leans back in toward him. “Why would you think that?”

Hux feels his eyebrows pinch over his nose, his jaw go rigid with an obstinate set. He’s determined to see this line of thinking through, so he can move on, one way or the other. “You said you’re anxious and angry, which you never seemed to be before we came home from Georgia,” he grits out, voice tight with his own misgivings. “You don’t really want to go out with me. You don’t really seem to want to have sex unless I push you. Do you even want to stay in the same room as me? I’m not trying to force you into anything, Ben, so if you…”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Hux,” Ben growls, cutting him off verbally and then bodily by reaching out and pulling Hux against him. There’s slight tremor in Ben’s frame, and Hux can feel his elevated pulse. And then as Ben wraps his arms around him, Hux realizes that it is him that is trembling, not Ben.

Hux is stiff, board-like in his embrace at first, analyzing the gesture despite himself; is this a goodbye hug? Is this consolation? Ben rests his cheek against Hux’s head, fingers gentle along the bare curve of Hux’s spine, up to his hair, down again, like he’s soothing a frightened child. Hux begins to grow indignant, but then Ben speaks.

“I knew I wouldn’t be any good at this.” His voice is raspy, like he’s trying to talk over heavy emotions. “I’m trying, Hux. I don’t like going out because crowds bother me, but I’ll do it because you like it. The sex thing is just…complicated, but it has nothing to do with you.” He sighs, warm breath fluttering Hux’s hair. “But again, I’m trying.”

Hux deflates slowly, finally shifting his arms to rest his hands hesitantly on Ben’s hips.  “So you aren’t just doing this because you don’t want to hurt my feelings?” he mutters into Ben’s neck.

Ben’s fingers close around Hux’s biceps, applying just enough pressure to guide him back so Ben can meet his eyes. His brows are pulled together in a look somewhere between pain, Hux thinks, and incredulity. Whatever the expression betrays, it instantly makes Hux flush, feeling foolish, and he looks away. Ben captures his chin and turns him back, Hux making him wait several seconds before he manages to make eye contact.

“I love you,” Ben says simply. “That’s why I’m doing this.”

Hux swallows around a sudden lump in his throat. “I love you, too,” he forces out, the words sounding parched and swollen.

Ben holds his gaze for a few seconds more, then leans forward and kisses Hux just above the bridge of his nose. “I’m going to go clean up,” he says quietly, releasing Hux and turning for the door. He pauses, throwing a glance back at Hux to perhaps see if Hux will object, but Hux’s head is buzzing and he feels a sort of frightened relief like he’s just fallen down a flight of stairs and realized that he hadn’t broken anything, that he’s still alive.

Hux follows Ben down the hall, not quite ready to surrender his anxiety, but trying to hold it in check because he suspects Ben doesn’t have much energy to comfort him. Truthfully, it should be the other way around, but Ben won’t speak plainly about his feelings, and Hux doesn’t know how to soothe a nameless beast.

Ben has paused in the door of the now-spare bathroom, and Hux sees his face crumble, which he quickly obscures by running a hand over eyes he squeezes shut. If Ben truly had only a vague memory of the night before, than seeing the shattered glass and the blood was likely a rude shock. Hux can understand this much, at least, even if the inner workings of Ben’s mind the night before remain shut to him.

Walking closer, Hux sets a hand on Ben’s back, stroking a path between his shoulderblades and leaving a kiss on his arm before going to the kitchen for a broom and a dustpan. Ben’s eyes are on him when he returns, and he looks, if anything, haunted. His gaze flicks to the broom in Hux’s hand, and he reaches for it.

“You don’t need to do this,” he says, and Hux lets him have the broom. He’s not going to argue about helping, he’s just going to do it.

There is glass littering the sink, scattered on the floor around the toilet, and plastered precariously in the mirror frame. Rust-red blood is dried at the epicenter of the broken mirror, and Hux winces thinking of those razor-sharp edges slicing into Ben’s hand. It makes his eyes wander over Ben’s frame to familiar scars, which Hux has always avoided asking about in case the question might dredge up some uncomfortable story from Ben’s military days. He’d imagined most of them had come from the helicopter crash that had caused the long gash across his face, but now he isn’t sure. Now he questions the ones on Ben’s inner wrist, and the short, poorly healed mark on his throat. What do his tattoos cover?

Ben has set the broom down, propped against the wall, and is examining the mirror without looking at his fractured reflection. “Can you bring me a screwdriver?” he asks, and his voice cracks on the last syllable.

Hux glances at the screws mounting the brackets to the wall, leaves his post in the doorway for a moment, and returns with a phillips-head. He notices when he puts it in Ben’s hand that he’s not wearing shoes, and there’s a shard of glass dangerously close to his foot. Bending down, Hux picks it up, earning himself a sharp look from Ben.

“You really don’t have to help me, Hux. This is my bullshit to clean up.” He sounds like he is resigned to regret.

Hux ignores that comment, and goes to get a cardboard box from the hall closet to throw the glass in. When he returns, Ben has taken the first two screws out from the bottom of the mirror, and they are resting in the soap dish. When Hux sees him press his bandaged hand to the top of the mirror, holding it in place while he tries to unscrew the last fastening, Hux frowns and crowds in next to him.

“Give me that,” he demands, holding out his hand for the screwdriver.

“I’m fine,” Ben says, brow furrowing.

“You’re stubborn,” Hux corrects, “and you’re going to cut yourself again and bleed all over my sink.”

Something about that arrests Ben, and he stares at Hux for a moment before handing him the tool. Together, they get the mirror off the wall and it goes into the hallway with the bloody towel from the night before draped across it. Both will go to the trash bin outside, telling a sordid tale for the neighbors, no doubt.

Ben sweeps up the glass in a dangerous dance with bare feet, making Hux nervous, but he somehow manages to get it all into a pile without stepping on any. Hux doesn’t ask to assist, he just bends down with the dustpan and holds it while Ben sweeps the glass in. Hux flatly refuses to let him pick up the shards from the counter, making him hold the cardboard box while he lifts them up gingerly and tosses them in.

“I’ll get you another mirror,” Ben mumbles, staring into the box.

Hux sorts through possible responses, wanting to dismiss the mirror entirely but knowing Ben won’t fall for it. “It’s not my mirror, anyway,” he ventures. “We just rent this place.” He drops a shard in and it clinks against the rest of the glass. “I was thinking, actually, of not renewing the lease here in December. Of looking for a house instead.” He pauses, searching Ben’s face, which is, at present, blank. Hux goes on: “You know, something that’s ours.”

Ben’s eyes widen at this, forehead crinkling. “Why would you want to buy a house with me? I’m about to scrub blood off the bathroom floor.”

“Shit happens,” Hux says, refusing to be goaded. He plucks the last shard of glass out of the sink and tosses it in.

“Not this kind of shit,” Ben mutters, setting the box of glass on the counter. He starts to pick the broom up again, but Hux steps closer to him and slides his arms around Ben’s waist.

“You aren’t the first person on Earth to deal with PTSD,” Hux says. “And not the only person to have someone love them despite the stuff they don’t like about themselves.” He kisses Ben’s chin, watches his eyes dart away toward the wall. “I deal with my share of anxiety and do ridiculous things like make up fiancés and drag them to funerals across the country, and you still love me. There’s no reason you don’t deserve the same.”

Ben meets his eyes again. “I don’t deserve you,” he says, leaning in to touch their foreheads together.

Hux drops one hand down to pinch Ben through his pajama pants, earning a half smile. “You don’t get to say that again,” Hux informs him sternly, and kisses him before whatever self-deprecating thing that was next on his tongue is given life.

Hux leaves Ben to clean up the blood on the tiled floor, offering no more assistance than to take the Clorox out from under the kitchen sink. He figures he’d only be in the way in the small space, and doesn’t want Ben to think he’s hovering in judgment of his ability to perform a simple task. Besides, Hux knows Ben could use the time to collect his thoughts.

He carries the box of glass and the shattered mirror to the trash, and then because it’s nearly eleven in the morning, he makes them pancakes. Ben tries to protest that he isn’t hungry, but Hux is hearing none of it. He asks Ben what he wants to do with his Saturday, and gets the stock answer of “whatever you want,” which Hux is temporarily wary of, and so he suggests a low-key day of doing nothing but marathoning _Battlestar Galactica._ All the while, he does his best to think of some way to alleviate Ben’s anxiety, to help him sleep, that doesn’t include not sharing a bed with him. It’s eight o’clock when something finally occurs to him, and he realizes he’s stupid for not seeing it before.

Ben is lying on the couch with his head in Hux’s lap, and when Hux looks down, he sees Ben’s eyes have drifted closed. Hux combing his tousled hair out of his face makes him startle awake, and it tugs a memory to the surface. They’d done this same thing over a year ago, sitting on the couch together watching this show, and Hux remembers being secretly thrilled because Ben had let him put his feet in his lap, and every now and again he’d touch them, massaging the soles, stroking fingers along Hux’s long toes. Every time it sent little shockwaves through Hux, gave him goosebumps, and he’d almost worked up the nerve to orchestrate some other kind of physical contact to see where that might lead when Ben had yawned and patted Hux’s leg and said it was past his bedtime. Hux remembers marveling at the fact that he was going to bed at eight-thirty on a Saturday, and he’d teased him for it because he wanted him to stay, but Ben said he had to get up at four in the morning to go running, which he did every morning.

As Ben turns in his lap, facing Hux’s stomach and burrowing into his t-shirt, Hux realizes that ever since the night his father had died, Ben hadn’t been to bed before Hux, once. That night, Hux is fairly sure that Ben stayed awake just in case Hux needed him, and he had, even if it was to rope him into the bizarre adventure of pretending to be his fiancé. They’d been up all week in Georgia until nearly midnight, woken up late, and that pattern had continued since they’d come home. Hux himself is a night owl, operating on five to six hours of sleep a night, and Ben had let him torpedo his routine, the one he said kept him from needing his anxiety medication, just to do what he’s doing right now, which is accommodate Hux. If Hux hadn’t been so high on their new relationship, lapping up every second of Ben’s much-craved attention, he might have noticed. Ben's words earlier that day, about his  _strict fucking schedule_ , finally sink in.

Hux sighs, carding a hand through Ben’s hair again, running a thumb around the shell of his ear and making him twitch. “Baby,” he prompts softly, “let’s go to bed.”

Ben stirs and blinks at him, then rolls his head to look at the clock. “It’s early,” he mumbles. “Didn’t realize I fell asleep. Sorry.”

He starts to turn back toward the TV to resume watching the series, but Hux picks up the remote and flicks it off. Ben looks up at him from his lap.

“I want to get up and go running with you in the morning,” Hux announces, trying not to wince at the thought.

Ben raises both eyebrows, comical from this angle. “You want to go running?” His tone is every bit as dubious as Hux feels.

Hux squirms, forcing Ben to sit up. “Yes. I’ve decided that I need to get into shape, and you will have the honor of being my personal trainer.” Hux could have gone one of two ways with this suggestion, and had the feeling appealing to the idea of Ben doing what was best for his own mental health would have been a rockier road.

Ben is staring at him in disbelief, but Hux fixes him with what he hopes is an enthusiastic expression, and sees the incredulity slowly bleed away to be replaced with genuine interest. “Really?” Ben asks. “You want to get up at four in the morning?”

“Yes. I used to do it all the time.” That part is a bit of a white lie; there was a time when he’d gotten up that early to study for exams during finals for a few days in a row.

Ben’s right eyebrow quirks. “Have you ever been running before?”

“Yes, of course,” Hux says, lifting his chin. He’d once run to class when he was about to be late.

After watching him for a moment, as though judging his fitness for this endeavor, Ben finally offers him an encouraging smile. “Okay.” He drags the last syllable out, but Hux lets that go.

Ben follows him to bed without further protest, and Hux doesn’t encourage anything beyond going to sleep, which Hux doesn’t manage himself for some time. It’s fine with him, though, because Ben seems to drift off without trouble, and Hux holds him, trying not to move for hours, daring to imagine a wedding in Georgia, until sleep finally claims him after midnight.

When the alarm goes off at four a.m., Hux has a very immediate insight into Ben’s recent emotional strain. He swats the clock harder than he means to, and bites back a curse. He and Ben had disconnected sometime in the night, and Ben is blinking drowsily when Hux rolls over to face him. Millicent is curled in a ball on Ben’s pillow, her belly pressed to his head and her tail draped over his ear. Just as Hux is smiling at the sight, Millie gives him a baleful look and flips her tail to cover Ben’s face, expressing her disdain at the humans disrupting her sleep.

“I think she forgives you,” Hux murmurs sleepily.

Ben appears to be trying not to move, eyes comically trying to observe Millicent’s tail from up close. He blows at it, ruffling the fur, and Millie flips it again but doesn’t offer to move. “I’m starting to feel like the shit they say about gingers is true,” Ben mutters, but his eyes are smiling.

Hux scoffs, and shoos Millicent off the pillow so Ben doesn’t have to. “We only devour souls on Mondays.” Then he squawks as Ben suddenly rolls him over and straddles him, leaning in to press lazy kisses against Hux’s warm neck. Hux purrs, dragging his hands up Ben’s back, kneading the powerful shoulders. “This is a good way to not go running,” Hux mouths against Ben’s collarbone.

That earns him a quick, hard kiss on the lips and then Ben’s comfortable weight is gone as he crosses to the bathroom. Hux lies there a moment longer before groaning under his breath and rolling himself out of bed.

Hux had previously had only a vague understanding that Ben worked out, and that there was running involved, but he didn’t expect the two mile trek to the gym. For some reason when he’d hatched this idea the night before, he’d imagined a leisurely jog not much further than the train station. Instead, trying to keep up with Ben leaves him wheezing and appalled at how out of shape he is, even though he’s pretty sure that Ben is compensating for it with his pace.

Then there is the actual working out part, and Hux has to dig deep to drum up some enthusiasm for the idea of having a personal trainer, because Ben apparently took that part seriously. The saving grace is that Ben seems genuinely delighted to take on that role, glad to have Hux alongside, even if Hux can hardly manage any of the weight limits Ben can. Ben doesn’t pick on him, however, and in fact is rather free with his praise, which Hux finds immediately addictive, and that encourages him to try his best.

He’s not expecting the run back, another grueling two miles that he can’t finish in one go, but Ben is patient even when Hux snarls about the impossibility of the workout and demands Ben go on without him so he can just lie on the sidewalk and die. Against all odds, they actually make it back to the house an hour after sunrise.

Hux stumbles into their bedroom and collapses on the bed, still panting from climbing the astronomical number of stairs (five) to get to the door. He glares at Ben, who isn’t even breathing heavily.

“I hate you,” Hux says without venom. “How do you look like you didn’t do anything but take a stroll around the block?”

Ben smirks at him, pulling off his sweat-dark t-shirt and tossing it in the floor. Hux glares at that too. “You’ll get there,” Ben says, and gives him an affectionate pat on the knee.

Hux snorts. “If I don’t die first.”

Walking into the bathroom, Ben calls over his shoulder: “Are you always this dramatic?”

“You should know the answer to that by now.” Hux hears the shower come on, imagines his response is drowned out by the sound. He levers himself up into a sitting position, tempted by the idea of spending a half-hour beneath the water with Ben.

Ben, apparently, has the same idea, because he comes out and gestures over his shoulder. “Go get in. Be there in a sec.” He disappears into his old bedroom.

Hux wastes no time stripping out of his clinging workout clothes and stepping into the shower. The water is the perfect temperature, just on the verge of too hot, which is something he and Ben agree on. He lets the water flatten his hair over his forehead and sluice the sweat from his skin with his eyes closed, sighing contentedly. It’s just a matter of seconds before the shower curtain scrapes back and Ben joins him.

Hux leans out of the spray just enough to clear the water from his eyes, and before he has them fully open, he feels Ben’s hands on his hips, pulling him close, and can’t help a small gasp when he feels Ben’s full erection hard against his belly.

He opens his eyes just in time to meet Ben’s lips, a kiss so deeply hungry it takes Hux’s breath away at first, and all he can do is find purchase for his hands in Ben’s hair. His body is pulled taut against Ben’s, hands palming both cheeks of his ass, his own cock rapidly filling between them. He finally comes up for air, but before he can speak, Ben’s hands are on his hips again with intent.

“Turn around,” Ben says, and Hux’s cock throbs at the husky command. He does as he’s told, only then noticing the bottle of lube from Ben’s room.

It’s quickly in Ben’s hands, and Hux leans forward, bracing himself with both palms on the wall tile, and groans when Ben parts his cheeks with one hand and presses a slick finger to Hux’s entrance. Ben caresses the rim with a practiced touch, knowing just how much pressure to tease him with, but not having patience to make a long game of it. After only a moment, Hux feels that thick finger sliding inside him, stretching him on it.

Ben avoids his prostate until he’s worked two fingers inside, and when he finally crooks his fingers, exactly right, Hux shouts and bucks forward. His knees and thighs are already weak from the run and the gym, and they are quivering now, threatening to drop him to the floor. A supportive hand grips his hip, massaging the plane of skin just at the base of his cock.

Hux curses when Ben pulls out, then growls low in his throat when he feels the two fingers replaced with three, lube trickling down his balls more heavily than than the water. Ben uses the hand on Hux’s hip to make him sway back onto his hand, and Hux gets the picture, fucking himself open until it isn’t enough, until his belly is a tight knot of need and his arms are trembling where they’re braced against the wall.

Hux turns his head to look at Ben, and words don’t need to be exchanged. Ben withdraws his fingers again, and then he enters him in one, long stroke that rocks Hux forward toward the wall and makes him cry out. Ben doesn’t go slowly, seeming as completely taken with want as Hux. The water cascading over them magnifies the slap of skin meeting skin, makes the sound of Ben’s cock slamming into him completely obscene, and Hux nearly comes just listening to it. He feels that same fire in his stomach that he’d felt that first time in the shower, when he’d taken Ben’s hand and guided it down to touch him for the first time, and somewhere in his hazy mind Hux realizes that this feels new, that Ben has never fucked him like this before. Like he really wants it.

By the time Ben wraps a hand around Hux’s cock, it takes only a single stroke before he’s coming with a hoarse shout, fingers scrabbling against the tile when his knees try to buckle. Ben catches him with an arm around his waist, and Hux feels him reach his climax, even strokes stuttering, stopping as he pulses inside him. His fingers dig into Hux’s skin, voice a gasping sob like this is the first time his release has truly been absolute.

Hux feels like the only thing keeping him upright is Ben, and he doesn’t dare try to stand up straight until Ben’s ragged, loud breathing slows and he slips free. Then his hands are on Hux, steadying him, turning him around where Hux’s arms go around his neck to find balance. Ben’s arms are tight around his waist, and they are both trembling despite the steam filled shower. Neither of them speak for a moment, faces pressed together and eyes closed; Hux’s mind is blissfully blank, his whole body feeling limp, boneless.

Gradually, they come back to themselves, and neither of them mention how good that had just been, but Hux can’t stop thinking it. Like maybe meeting in the middle somewhere with a thing so simple as a routine is what they needed. Or maybe it’s just endorphins. Or both. Either way, he’ll take it, and do his best to hang on to it.

They finish their shower lazily, whispering over the water, taking turns washing each other, soapy hands caressing every inch of skin until they are both hard again. They barely manage to dry off before they fall into bed, where they make love again before falling asleep wrapped around each other.

Hux dreams of sunlight dappling the leaves of Southern oaks, of white chairs on a brilliant green lawn, of Ben in a tuxedo, smiling as he speaks.

 


	5. A Good Dream Is Only Temporary

The trouble with having good dreams, is that he never wants to wake from them.

Consciousness may be flitting at the corners of his mind, subtle recognition that none of these constructs of wishful thinking and poverties of the soul are real, but he will be unwilling to surrender to that reality. He does enough of that in waking hours. It’s easier to let himself be lulled by the way his buried longings manifest in the sleeping mindscape, by how the complexity of avoidance and shame and regret are peeled back one layer at a time to reveal simple solutions. Neurons firing to trigger assorted memories his mind is offering as a method to alleviate pain. If such dreams could be bottled, or pressed into a pill, the whole human race would be addicted.

And yet, like every form of respite sold over a counter, a good dream is only temporary. At some point, the alarm goes off.

The residual images of Hux’s family home, of faceless strangers in summer dresses and suits, feel like a prophecy of longing, the sound of music and laughter trying to drag Ben back down into the comforting cocoon of sleep. Then he hears Hux’s muffled whine, bordering on a groan that vibrates against his neck, and part of Ben’s drowsy warmth rolls away and slaps the beeping alarm into submission. Ben smiles without opening his eyes; after nearly fourteen weeks of getting up at four A.M. seven days a week, Hux is still not remotely a morning person.

The sheets flurry as Hux throws them aside, fanning a cold draft down onto Ben, who opens one eye and assesses Hux’s state of mind. He’s flat on his back, eyes squeezed shut despite the fact that there is no more light in the room than the limpid blue glow from the aquarium. He’s managed only to uncover one leg and drop it off the bed to hang over the floor, and the frown on Hux’s lips is serious, enough so that a bemused laugh escapes Ben in a tiny huff. Hux, attuned to him as always, must hear it, because one arm raises at the elbow and then his hand drops in a limp, half-hearted swat onto Ben’s shoulder.

Ben’s smile stretches fully, and he reaches out and curls an arm around Hux’s waist, giving a gentle tug.

Hux growls. “We have to get up. It’s hard enough without you getting handsy.”

Ben scoots closer to him, leaning in to nuzzle the soft skin just below his ear. “I think we’ll take today off.”

“You don’t take days off,” Hux grunts, but he turns his head against the pillow and opens his eyes, nose pressed to Ben’s. His expression is, Ben notes with amusement, hopeful. Before Ben can respond, Hux makes an impassioned sales’ pitch, rolling toward him and fitting his naked body temptingly alongside Ben’s. “We could still get our cardio, you know. Forty-five minutes of rigorous sex, keeping the heart rate elevated…”

Ben laughs, tugging him closer and flipping the covers back over them. “You’re insatiable. How are you going to survive two weeks without me?”

That might have been the wrong thing to say in the moment, because Hux’s face crumples and he burrows down against Ben’s shoulder. “I am _not_ going to survive and you know it,” Hux mutters miserably into Ben’s neck.

Ben rubs his cheek against Hux’s tousled hair, runs fingers lightly down his spine and over the soft swell of his buttocks, tickling the fine hair on the underside of his balls and making Hux gasp sharply. 

“Maybe we should record some amatuer porn for you to watch so you don’t wither away and die,” Ben purrs in Hux’s ear.

Hux looks up sharply at that, and Ben has to bite back a laugh at the astonished look in his round, blue-green eyes.

“Are you serious?” Hux breathes.

“Not at all,” Ben says, smirking as Hux frowns severely at him.

“You’re not even remotely funny,” Hux grumbles, rolling over to face away from Ben and tugging the blankets up to his chin. “I’ll have you know I would look damn good on camera.”

Sliding across the few inches Hux had put between them, Ben circles his waist again with an arm, stroking the hand up across Hux’s chest and making a circle around one nipple. Hux makes a low noise and nudges back against Ben, grinding his ass slowly on Ben’s thickening cock, the friction sending little pulses of electricity down the insides of Ben’s thighs, making him groan.

“I’m going to miss this,” Ben breathes, pressing a humid kiss to the underside of Hux’s jaw. Hux tilts his head, baring his neck for him, and reaches back to find Ben’s hip, slender fingers guiding him closer.

“Which part?” Hux asks, voice low and husky, the sound making Ben’s stomach clench.

He takes Hux’s earlobe between his teeth, tongues it. “This part.”

“Mmmmm. Just that one?” Hux turns his head enough that Ben can taste the corner of his lips.

“And this one,” Ben tells him, kissing the little constellation of freckles on Hux’s shoulder. He finds Hux’s hand, brings the fingers to his lips. “And these.”

Hux’s face is pink where it’s turned into the pillow, and not just with arousal, Ben thinks. In his own way, Hux is as poorly used to being praised as Ben is, which only serves to inspire it. Ben shifts, guiding Hux onto his back and himself atop, then peppers kisses along the narrow wings of Hux’s collarbones, pausing to nip gently at the dip between, making Hux tilt his head back with a throaty sigh.

“This spot too,” Ben murmurs, and Hux’s lips curve into a smile. His eyes are closed, both hands behind his head, fingers curled into the pillow. Ben reaches up, takes one delicate wrist and draws it down. Hux looks at him as he kisses the paper-thin skin over pale blue veins, and Ben takes the opportunity to capture his lips. They part for his tongue, chase him when he pulls back after only a teasing moment to continue his exploration of all the things he will miss.

_The way Hux’s back arches and he gasps when Ben laves his tongue over a nipple, pinches it softly between his teeth. The way Hux keeps his fingers in Ben’s hair now, nails massaging his scalp so softly it tickles. The concave shape of Hux’s belly when he inhales deeply beneath Ben’s lips, body twitching when Ben takes the fine hairs below his navel between his teeth and tugs, just enough for him to feel it. How he parts his thighs willingly, knees falling open, cock flushed and curved toward one prominent hip bone, the pearl of pre-come salty-sweet on Ben’s tongue._

Ben makes a path with his lips down the full length of Hux’s body, losing the fingers in his hair as he disappears beneath the blankets to mark Hux’s calves, toned from months of running. Ben is every bit aware that Hux has no interest in the activity, but has let him keep up his charade of wanting to be in shape, loving him that much more every morning Hux forces himself out of bed because he knows the routine keeps Ben sane.

The last thing Ben reaches are Hux’s feet, with their perfect toes, and he grins to himself as he takes the longest one in his mouth and hears a muffled cry from Hux, who jerks his leg back. That same foot finds Ben’s side, nudging him up, and Ben crawls back up his body the same way, with the worshipful brush of lips in all Hux’s sensitive places. He stops at the groove where hip meets thigh, dragging his tongue along the velvet crease, cupping Hux’s balls and teasing the downy-fine hairs with lips and breath before holding them out of his way so he can massage the erogenous zone beneath. Hux’s thigh quivers where it touches Ben’s arm, and he’s pliable and nearly boneless when Ben takes him by the hips and flips him over. The sound of the mixture of surprise and arousal that comes from Hux makes Ben’s cock pulse, his fingers clench with the desire to be inside him. Hux likes being manhandled, held down, picked up and fucked against the wall. Lifted onto the counter in the kitchen, like the morning before when Ben had walked in to find a half-asleep Hux making coffee in nothing but a t-shirt, bare ass just peeking out from beneath the hem.

Ben takes that same ass between his teeth now, biting down hard enough to bruise, making Hux squeak. Ben peers up at him, flesh still between his lips as he sucks the blood to the surface, making sure to mark him. Hux turns his head, propping it on his arm to look down at Ben with one eye.

“You’re a beast,” he says, sounding nearly drugged.

“You like it.” Ben licks the purpling bruise, gives it a soft peck, then takes both cheeks in his palms and spreads the cleft of Hux’s ass. He dips his head down, swipes his tongue across Hux’s entrance, and Hux _gasps_ , bucking beneath him. Ben’s stomach clenches again around a knot of want, more turned on by making Hux writhe than by actively chasing his own pleasure. Nevertheless, he rolls his hips against the bed, seeking friction as he leans in to taste Hux again.

“Ben, _holy fuck_ ,” Hux cries out when Ben’s tongue flicks across his entrance a second time. They’d never done this, and it’s an impulse on Ben’s part. He glances up to see if he’d miscalculated, but Hux has buried his face in the pillow, fingers white-knuckled in the goose-down. A pretty flush has spread over his shoulders, and he lifts his ass higher, giving Ben all the response he needs.

Ben resumes slowly, the experience new to him. Hux radiates heat, has a sleepy, musky smell that Ben decides he loves. Ben explores him entirely, dragging the wet flat of his tongue along the length of his cleft, suckling at the base of his testicles, tracing the outline of his puckered rim. Hux tastes faintly of lubricant and, Ben realizes with a groan, the salty remnant of his own seed from the sex they’d had the night before.

Hux is making soft keening noises into the pillow now, his hips moving in a needy rhythm as he both presses back onto Ben’s tongue and ruts against the mattress. Ben finds him opening easily to the attention, and Hux shudders every time Ben’s tongue dips inside him. When he’s wet enough, Ben tests the stretch with two fingers, massaging his prostate while he reaches over to the bedside table and grabs the lube. He adds a third finger, slicking himself with one hand and letting Hux work himself on the other.

Withdrawing, Ben eases himself down over Hux, licking at his neck, his own breath heavy and uneven with need. Still, he doesn’t rush, wanting to draw out every sensation to cement this morning in his memory, to carry it with him to California.

“Maybe,” Ben whispers in Hux’s ear, tongue flicking out to caress the shell. “We can try this with you on top when I get home.” Just saying it out loud made Ben’s stomach flip. He’d been thinking about it ever since that one, disastrous night when Hux had suggested it, and now he actively wants it, even with an undercurrent of fear.

Hux turns his face from the pillow, reaches up and slides his hand across Ben’s cheek, into his hair. “We don’t have to, baby.” Hux’s voice is hoarse.

Ben rubs his cock along the cleft of Hux’s ass, and Hux lifts his hips as much as he can, prone on his belly beneath Ben. Angling himself with one hand, Ben breaches him with just the tip before he responds.

“I want you,” he whispers against Hux’s throat. “Want to feel you open me up with those pretty fingers.”

Hux makes an undignified noise, lips parted and the pillow damp beneath. Ben slides deeper inside him, feeling Hux try to shift to adjust the angle, but he can’t with Ben’s weight pressing him down. The rise and fall of Hux’s shoulders quickens in response; he likes being pinned this way, and it makes Ben’s imagination soar as he gradually sheathes himself fully inside.

“You want to be inside me like this?” Ben breathes into his ear, and Hux groans, cheeks flushed as he nods.

Ben bites at Hux’s neck, thrusting shallowly. “Think you could hold me down this way, though?”

Hux eyebrows take on a devilish slant. “I could... _ah_...use rope.”

Ben muffles the sound that inspires by kissing Hux, their lips barely meeting from this angle, sloppy and broken with panting as Ben thrusts deeper. It isn’t long until the bed rocks beneath them, the frame knocking a familiar staccato rhythm against the wall that neither of them had ever cared to prevent, despite who might overhear. Ben fucks him until Hux is writhing, desperate for friction on his cock, and he growls in protest when Ben slows, pulling them both back from their release. Sliding one arm beneath Hux’s waist, Ben coaxes Hux to his knees, then gets his own beneath him and sits back on his heels, bringing Hux with him into his lap.

Keeping one arm around his waist, Ben grips Hux’s cock as they collide together again and again with loud, frantic slaps until Hux is spilling over Ben’s hand, shouting “ _Fuck_ ,” and shaking hard with his release. The way he clenches down on Ben and trembles drives him over the edge, just like feeling Hux come around his cock always does, and his climax floods through him like liquid fire. It leaves his limbs tingling, toes curled into the sheets, vision blurry at the edges as he takes deep, gasping breaths against Hux’s sweat-sheened neck.

When he finally manages to relinquish the grip around Hux’s waist, Hux slides off him and falls limply to the bed with a low, dramatic groan, face down. Ben lets his heart rate return to normal, stroking the flushed swell of Hux’s ass tenderly. Hux mutters something but Ben can’t understand him with his face in the mattress, and it’s not until Ben has withdrawn something from the drawer in the nightstand and pressed its cold, steel head against Hux’s tender entrance that Hux looks around with a start.

“What are you…ahhhhh. Oh my god.” Hux gasps as Ben slides the small steel plug in, adjusting it until the flared base sits snugly against him.

“This better still be here when I call you tonight,” Ben says, tracing one finger down Hux’s back, and then thumbing the plug against Hux’s overly-sensitive prostate.

Hux flinches, rolls over slowly, legs falling open wantonly as he reaches down between them and fingers the plug. He regards Ben with sultry eyes, pupils still dilated. “Take me with you.”

“You’ll set the security alarm off like that,” Ben smiles, sliding off the bed and walking to the bathroom when Hux snorts with laughter.

They shower together, another part of their morning ritual, and spend a long time kissing lazily beneath the spray. Truthfully, Ben is ambivalent about his upcoming business trip; a coil of anxiety has been working itself around his heart for the last week as the day of his flight approached, and this morning it’s unrelenting. It’s a nameless thing, a sense of dread without reason, though he tells himself it’s just the fact that it’s California this time, and he has to fly again, without Hux’s sense of calm to cling to like he clings to him now in the shower. Ironically, he’d agreed to the more distant trip because he’d felt like the experience of taking a plane with Hux had let him work through his fear of being in the air again.

For previous out-of-town trips, Ben had rented a fun car, told his boss he wanted the excuse to be behind the wheel instead of on a plane, and had used PTO to take in roadtrips on either end of the work excursion. It was the only thing he’d used his paid time off for since taking the job years ago, and while he’d enjoyed the adventures, there had always been something missing, a passenger to turn to and point out the mountains or the sunset. Someone to order room service with instead of eating alone in a shitty chain restaurant. It had always been Hux he’d pictured with him, Hux’s graceful fingers he’d imagined twined with his own over the center console as the highway stretched out before them.

“We should take a roadtrip,” Ben tells Hux over a late breakfast later that morning.

Hux is plainly discontented, cutting his mushroom omelet into pieces with the edge of his fork, but not actually eating it. “You should take me with you. I could get a later flight.” He looks up hopefully, and Ben feels a pang of sadness.

“It’s really not worth you taking that much time off, baby,” he says gently for perhaps the tenth time in the last few weeks. “I’ll be working twelve, fourteen hour days. I’ll want to go to sleep the minute I’m back in the room. You’ll be alone and bored.”

“I’ll be with you, at least, instead of alone and bored at home.” Hux speared a grape tomato with irate vigor and it squelched on the tines of his fork, leaking watery red juice across his plate.

Ben sighs, hating this conversation because the concept of telling Hux _no_ is thoroughly unappealing. He’d considered it, honestly, as unthrilled as Hux is at the idea of not seeing his face for fourteen days, of not feeling his hands on his skin, but there are better things to do with vacation time. Like maybe take a honeymoon. Something holds him back from sharing that thought, though; whether it’s the fear of disappointing Hux with his indecision, or of Hux disappointing him by rejecting that idea, Ben doesn’t know.

“I’ll talk to you every night,” Ben tells him, reaching over to rub the spot between Hux’s shoulderblades.

Hux turns his face away, eats the tomato, then drops his fork on his plate with a clatter. He’s eaten next to none of the breakfast he’d cooked, and Ben has only managed as much of his own omelet because Hux had gone to the effort to make it for him.

Hux doesn’t bring up the idea of flying to California with him again, and he only makes a token suggestion that he could share the Uber to the airport just to see him off. He does follow Ben outside to the car, clinging to him for a long moment while the Uber driver waits. Ben promises again that he’ll call when he lands in San Francisco, and that he’ll be safe, and that he’ll call every night, and assures an anxious Hux that yes, he packed his medication and his vitamins, and yes, he’ll make sure to eat breakfast, and that he’ll come home to him.

He’ll always do that.

Hux watches the car drive away, arms folded around himself like he’s trying to keep something in, and Ben watches him too, until the car turns a corner and he’s gone.

 

* * *

 

The ensuing days are the longest of Hux’s life.

The first afternoon without Ben, Hux waits anxiously on the couch with Millie in his lap and his phone in his hand, checking it constantly for updates from the airline about the flight status, weather forecasts for the entire midwest, and reading up on the senator Ben will be heading the security detail for.

By the time Ben calls from San Francisco International, Hux knows nearly everything there is to know about presidential nominee hopeful W.A. Tarkin, has a restaurant picked out near Ben’s hotel he’s convinced Ben should try, and has watched two sappy romantic comedies that serve only to upset him more. Ben talks to him until his phone battery is dying, and then promises to call him when he wakes up. Hux slinks to bed at half past midnight, the rumpled sheets still smelling like sex, and he presses his face into Ben’s pillow and falls into nightmare-filled sleep. He gets up at four the next morning, and goes on their run, because it feels like he’s still doing it for Ben.

His work week drags, looking at his phone a dozen times every hour in case he’s missed a text message from Ben, even though Ben had told him he couldn’t text from work. Hux is too distracted to lose himself in his coding, forgets to eat lunch, and lives only for the fact that Ben Skypes him precisely at eight P.M. every night. They talk for two hours, as though the distance has drummed up a thousand things they want to say to each other, and they make plans for Hux’s birthday at the end of the month. Hux has gone shopping and gotten new bedding for what is, now, officially their guest bedroom; his brother Donnie and his wife Holly have gotten plane tickets, and fly in the week after Ben comes home.

Neither of them mention how, or whether they even will, continue the charade of being engaged.

It’s the Sunday at the end of that first, grueling week that Hux drinks a whole bottle of Chardonnay and goes on Facebook for the first time in more than a year. Something about anticipating a visit from his brother and his crushing loneliness has made him feel terribly nostalgic, and he scrolls through the numerous messages of sympathy for the loss of his father and the plethora of new friend requests.

There’s one from Mitaka, which makes Hux grin. They’ve become relatively decent friends over the past few months, and Mitaka had even taken him out for a platonic drink the night before, telling Hux he looked “like he needed one in a bad way.”

Hux accepts the friend request, then pours himself another glass of wine from the newly-opened second bottle. Millicent creeps onto his lap in the way cats do when they know they’re getting in the way, and settles between Hux and the laptop keyboard. Knowing if he scrapes her off she’ll just be right back in a few minutes, Hux simply rests his wrists on top of her so he can type.

There’s a message from his mother, asking him simply if he “ever gets on this thing,” which Hux takes to mean Facebook. He clicks to her page and his mouth drops open slightly to see the myriad images of flower bouquets, banquet ideas, cakes, and mother-of-the-groom dresses that she has reposted. He and Ben have given her only vague responses about her wedding planning, and Hux hadn’t realized it was this high of a fever.

Scrolling further as he sips his wine in mild horror, Hux finds a picture of he and Ben from their trip to Georgia, and his throat is instantly tight. They are in the kitchen, Ben’s arms around him from behind, Hux leaning into his embrace and twining their fingers together. Neither of them are looking at the camera, Hux’s face turned in toward Ben’s neck and Ben’s lips pressed to his forehead, eyes closed. Hux recognizes the shirt he’s wearing, knowing the picture was taken the day they finally admitted how they felt, and there’s such a look of peace about it, like they were two people that had been swimming desperately against the tide and had finally stopped struggling, allowing themselves to just float with the current.

There’s a request associated with the picture; his mother had attempted to tag him, but Hux’s security settings require him to approve it first. Hux does so, then shares the picture to his feed before he saves it to his hard drive. His mother hadn’t tagged Ben, and Hux tries a few variations of his name before he surmises that Ben does not have a Facebook account. While he’s doing this, a notification pops up from Phasma, who has just shared it from him and commented on the photo with the words _“my favorite two idiots!”_

Hux smiles, idly scratching Millie’s orange fur and sipping his wine. It’s after six and the wait until Ben’s nightly phone call seems interminable. He’s about to open up Candy Crush, which he’s all but abandoned since things had heated up with Ben, when a message pops up in the right hand corner of the screen. Hux peers at it, not recognizing the sender.

 

_(Poe Dameron) : Hey! Sorry for the creepy rando message, but how do you know Ben Solo?_

 

Hux stares at the message for a long moment, considers just exiting out of the application, but curiosity gets the better of him.

 

_(Armitage Hux) : I’m engaged to him. Who is this?_

 

_(Poe Dameron) : Engaged??? Damn. That’s news._

 

_(Poe Dameron) : Haha sorry man I just saw the pic Phasma shared. We were old military buddies. I’ve known Ben a long time._

 

Hux takes another drink of his wine, then replenishes the glass. He clicks on the image in the corner of the message, and it takes him to Poe Dameron’s page, which is replete with memes, pictures of a very stout Corgi, and a snapshot of Poe with his arm around a red-haired woman named Katie in the stands at a hockey game.

 

_(Armitage Hux) : No problem. How long have you known him?_

 

_(Poe Dameron) : Since we were kids. How’s he doing?_

 

Hux frowns, wondering if he should be talking about Ben to anyone from his childhood, but since Poe is friends with Phasma, he decides the guy is probably harmless. Why Poe is asking this of Hux and not Phasma doesn’t occur to him, a bottle and half of Chardonnay in.

They talk for over an hour, with Hux learning that Poe’s family had been close with Ben’s for years, that Ben’s mother and twin brother had been fostered after her own mother’s death with a family friends. He tells Hux that he used to see Ben at holidays, and talks about some of the trouble they’d gotten up to. He asks Hux if Ben still draws, and that’s the first Hux has ever heard about that talent, and Hux asks him what Ben’s family is like. Somewhere in it all, Poe sends him a friend request, and Hux, mostly drunk, accepts it.

Hux’s mother calls at seven-thirty, just to tell him she had seen that he shared that picture, and Hux got so caught up in her wedding dreams that Ben’s call beeps in on the other line before he realizes the time. He closes his computer and carries the last of the wine to the bedroom where he settles against the pillows and forgets all about the conversation with Poe.

 

* * *

 

Ben hangs up the phone at eight his time, knowing Hux would probably have stayed up half the night talking to him if Ben didn’t enforce the phone discipline. He only does it because Hux needs his sleep, even if he says he doesn’t.

It had been a balmy day for October, and Ben had stretched out on a park bench to watch the seals in the rocky shoals while he talked to Hux. The wind off the ocean is chilly now, and he stuffs his hands in the pockets of his light jacket as he strolls back toward his hotel. The skin over his left shoulder blade burns from passing his Sunday morning, his only day of relative freedom, by finally getting the tattoo he’d been contemplating for weeks. He smiles to himself while imagining Hux’s reaction to it when he gets home.

He misses Hux more than he thought possible, which might have been partly behind the cathartic pain of the tattoo. Ben hasn’t mentioned during any of their phone calls that he’s not been sleeping well, that he’s taken a Xanax every night since he’s been here just to be able to shut down so he can finish this job, and so the time seems to pass just a little bit quicker. Hux’s mother had sent another message about whether they should have a rabbi at the wedding, and this time Ben replied and said that yes, they should, and that she should order that cake in the shape of an armadillo.

He pauses at a crosswalk, glances both ways, but then stops when something across the street catches his eye. It’s like providence, seeing the sign at the moment he’s thinking of going through with this completely insane thing he and Hux had gotten themselves into and continued to sink deeper with every day they avoid discussing it. Hux is still wearing Ben’s dog tags, the hasty, impulsive fake engagement gift Ben had given to him in the treehouse; Hux hadn’t offered, once, to return them. Ben hadn’t asked.

Changing direction, Ben makes his way past a line of cars at the stoplight, stepping up onto the curb and angling for the shop that had caught his attention. He pauses outside the glass front, looking through to the pleasantly lit interior with its rows of display cases.

He never thought he’d be in this place, standing outside a jewelry store, contemplating taking a chance like this. Ben finds himself thinking back to that day in Georgia, standing in the shower with Hux, when Hux had said he wanted their fake relationship to be real. Ben had wanted the same thing, and Hux’s words had been like a breath of life to a part of Ben that had slowly withered over the years since he’d cut himself off from his family, from Poe. The part of him that knew what it felt like to be loved.

It’s an addictive feeling, just like everything about Hux. As a soldier in a high-risk operation, Ben had stopped contemplating the future long ago, because trying to hold on to dreams that might never be was only a distraction.

And yet standing here staring through this window and imagining one of these rings on Hux’s finger, symbolic evidence of Ben’s commitment, Ben can truly, finally, picture the future. It’s largely nebulous, still fraught with the uncertainties of Ben’s own world, but Hux is there. The house Hux has been talking about for weeks is there, with its round, stained glass window and its backyard garden. The holidays he used to never celebrate are in his vision, and Hux’s family, and maybe, someday, Ben’s as well. At the core of it all is a deep, aching need to never wake up without knowing Hux is in his life, and he knows he has to make it real.

Ben reaches for the door handle, and goes inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ben's new tattoo looks like [this.](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/d6/2c/18/d62c18225a4b6f6c18623e1871c6ea51.jpg) Yes, it's a fox. ;)


	6. Missing Pieces

Ben finds himself leaning forward in his seat as the car turns the corner and pulls onto their street, as though pressing his face closer to the window will somehow bring him home faster. His fingers are curled around the handle of his carry-on, cell phone in the other; Hux had sent him a flurry of excited texts, abandoning punctuation in the last few, ranging from topics such as what they’ll have for dinner, what they’ll do in bed, and in what order it will all happen. The last text had arrived just after Ben slid into the front seat of the Uber, and was just a stream of smiley-faces with heart eyes; over the last two weeks, Hux’s usual perfunctory, perfectly composed and emoticon-free text speech had drastically deteriorated.

The trees lining the street are brilliant orange and yellow, the first of the leaves beginning to drift to the ground at the touch of the wind. Ben rolls the window down enough to hear them rustling, to smell the moisture heavy on the air, which is cool on his cheeks compared to autumn in California. Their stoop comes into view, and Ben is surprised not to see Hux, having expected him to be standing on the sidewalk just the way he’d left him two weeks before.

The car pulls up in front of the condo, and Ben thanks the driver with a smile, chest fluttering with giddy anticipation. Two weeks had felt more like two months, and he can’t wait to see Hux, to feel his soft lips and his arms around him, and to simply not stop touching him. He bounds up the steps to the door, expecting it to open at any moment, but at the last second he pauses and brings out his key, frowning slightly. Just before he slips it into the lock, it clicks and is pulled open from the inside.

At first, all Ben can register is Hux’s face, so dearly missed and which no number of pictures on his phone could replace, but after they stand transfixed by each other for a span of seconds, Ben notices other details. Such as, Hux is wearing nothing but one of Ben’s old t-shirts, draped to mid thigh and slipping down over one shoulder, drab olive green with _USMC_ stamped on it. His hair is loose around his face, partly tucked behind one ear, skin pink and freshly shaved, bottom lip between his lip for a brief moment as Ben’s eyes trail over him.

“Hi, gorgeous,” Hux says, and Ben notices his fingers on the door are pale from a forceful grip. Like he’s nervous, or trying to restrain himself from something.

Ben just grunts in reply, tossing his bags through the door onto the floor, and crowding Hux in with an arm around his waist. Hux lets go of the door with a small sound of surprise that turns to a throaty sigh of need when Ben’s lips meet his. Hux’s arms twine around his neck, the fingers of one hand in his hair, grip tight, and Ben kicks the door shut with his foot.

Ben trails his other hand down Hux’s spine, and Hux arches against him like a cat, lips desperate on his, breath coming loud through their noses as they cannot otherwise come up for air. Hux’s mouth opens for Ben’s tongue, his familiar taste of coffee and peppermint yet another thing Ben has sorely missed. His fingers bunch into the fabric of the t-shirt Hux is wearing, soft from being well-worn and often washed, and he drags it up, slipping his hand beneath to palm Hux’s perfect, round ass.

Ben pulls back in surprise, and Hux sways forward from the sudden loss of contact and catches himself with a palm on Ben’s shoulder. Ben pushes Hux’s shirt up over his belly, revealing not the naked body he’d expected, but a pair of decidedly feminine, scarlet lace panties. They fit snugly, cut low and leaving nothing about the shape of him to the imagination, a stark contrast against his milky skin.

Thumbing the hem, dipping the tip of his finger just below it and pulling them down over one hip bone, Ben hums low in his throat with approval. He glances up, meeting Hux’s half-lidded eyes that still manage to betray his anxious desire to please.

“I don’t think this is really fair,” Ben murmurs, sliding his hand back around to cup Hux’s right cheek, fingers blindly tracing the delicate lace patterns. “I don’t know whether I want you to take these off long enough for me to fuck you.”

Hux bites his bottom lip again, one eyebrow lifting coyly. “I guess that depends on how much you missed me.” He reaches around, takes Ben’s hand and guides it down so he can feel the nudge of a plug against the fabric.

Making it all the way to the bedroom then is a tricky affair, with Hux walking backward so he can help strip Ben of his clothes, and Ben trying to walk while shedding shoes and pants and keeping his lips on Hux’s.

The sex is quick, needy, with Hux on his knees and the lace panties around his thighs, shirt rucked up over the small of his back. Ben’s stamina is shot, but so is Hux’s, and they both climax within minutes of coming together, and then collapse in the middle of the bed. Ben pulls Hux to his chest, and Hux clings to him, the fingers of his left hand threaded through the hair at the nape of Ben’s neck.

“I missed you,” Hux whispers, the sultry tone having gone from his voice to be replaced by something fragile and raw.

Ben looks down at him, and Hux turns his face up at the motion and opens his eyes from beneath a curtain of red hair. Ben strokes it back and kisses his forehead. “I missed you too, baby,” he promises in a similar tone.

Hux’s expression might have been intended as stern, but comes across as pleading. “You’re not ever allowed to leave me again. I’m going with you next time if I have to pack myself in your suitcase.”

Ben laughs, but there’s an ache in his chest. It’s gratitude as well as the residual loneliness of California; while he’d talked to Hux every day, anticipated their reunion, there had still been that small, secret part of him that worried Hux would find clarity in his time alone, would realize that he could do better than Ben. Will that nagging whisper of self-doubt ever go away? He thinks of the ring at the bottom of his suitcase, hidden in little a black velvet box inside his dress shoe, and his pulse jumps.

He rolls Hux over, straddles him, and takes his time savoring Hux’s hungry kisses, the way those beloved hands trace the contours of Ben’s frame as though trying to reassure himself that Ben has come back to him in one piece. When those fingers dance over his left shoulder, feeling the way the skin is tighter beneath the new ink, Hux withdraws from the kiss, his face going instantly pink.

“So the portrait of me....” he intones against Ben’s lips, breath warm. “Are you going to let me see it?”

Ben vibrates with laughter, grinning. He’d told Hux about the tattoo, convinced him that he’d gotten a portrait of Hux permanently ingrained on his flesh, and then had refused to send him a picture. Hux’s effort to appear flattered and enthusiastic rather than horrified had been truly commendable.

Shifting off Hux’s lap, Ben turns, exposing his back and the tattoo, waiting on his knees for Hux’s reaction. There is nothing for a moment, then Hux swats his side.

“That is a fox, Ben Solo.”

Ben looks over his shoulder, grin plastered wider on his face. “Yeah. Portrait of you, like I said.”

Hux’s face is beet red, and he rolls over to hide it against Ben’s hip. “That wasn’t funny,” he complains, voice muffled. “I was worried.”

Ben is still shaking with laughter as he turns around and pulls Hux into his lap. He’s wearing nothing but the t-shirt now, lingerie kicked to the bottom of the bed. “Come on, you love it,” he purrs against Hux’s neck, dropping a kiss to his collarbone.

“Maybe a little bit,” Hux admits, and Ben feels him smiling into his hair as he traces the outline of the tattoo with his fingers. “Almost as much as I love you.”

Ben’s stomach does a tiny flip; hearing those words never gets old, and always feels unreal. The words hover just on the tip of his tongue, the question that will make it official between them, and yet he hesitates, feeling like this is a precipice, and that the fall might be too far.

He peels the t-shirt away from Hux’s frame, touching his lips to a pale shoulder, the hollow of his throat, trailing fingers down the silver chain around Hux’s neck to the dogtags that rest against his chest.

Hux touches Ben’s wrist, presses his palm down over Ben’s, so that the metal plates are trapped beneath. “Do you remember what you promised me when you gave me these?” Hux asks quietly.

Ben scans the memory of the two of them sitting on the musty treehouse floor, the clarity such that it could have been yesterday. Curling two fingers around the chain, Ben gives it a tug, pulling Hux toward him until their foreheads are touching, just as they had that day.

“I promised you that you wouldn’t be alone,” he says.

Hux smiles, and his eyes light up, so close Ben can see the flecks of gold in the blue-green. “I wanted it to mean something,” Hux says, voice wistful. “I’d given up thinking you’d ever be interested in me. If you hadn’t done that … I don’t know if I would have kissed you that day. I don’t know if any of this would ever have happened.”

Ben stares into Hux’s eyes, feels small in the face of fate; had that one, impulsive gesture of comfort truly changed the course of his life? He reaches up, runs the pad of his thumb over Hux’s cheek. “I wish I’d done something sooner.” Then he hesitates, and adds: “But maybe it wouldn’t have been the right time.”

Hux’s answering laugh is little more than a soft huff of breath on Ben’s lips. “You could have asked me out the day you moved in and I’d have swooned.”

Ben can’t fight the smile that evokes, but it softens with memory. “I almost did, more than once. I came home one night, late, and stood outside your door for probably a full five minutes thinking I _had_ to knock. I had to wake you up and tell you that I loved you and I needed you.”

Hux’s lips part. “Why didn’t you?” he sighs. “When?”

Ben shrugs one shoulder, strokes his hand up Hux’s thigh. “I’d been living here a year maybe. And I guess… I was just afraid. I still am.”

Hux shifts in his lap, fitting himself closer and touching Ben’s face, combing his hair behind an ear. “Why do I make you afraid?”

Ben’s forehead creases at the remorse in Hux’s voice. “You don’t. I guess I just worry you’ll find things that you don’t like about me and not want to be with me anymore.” It sounds pitiful in his own ears, weak, and he has to look down.

Hux drapes his arms around Ben’s shoulders, kissing his neck. “You’re perfect,” he hums.

Ben snorts. “I am not,” he mutters, dragging fingers down Hux’s spine. He doesn’t want to think about all the things that could go wrong between them, all the secrets that could punch holes in their relationship. He just wants to feel Hux in arms, warm and solid and _his_.

Shifting, Ben lays Hux down on top of the rumpled comforter, savoring every sigh and every soft moan of pleasure as he makes love to him again, unhurried this time.

 

They are lounging together on the couch later that evening, both sated and drowsy after spending half the afternoon in bed and then sharing dinner. Hux had insisted on cooking, citing the fact that Ben had existed on take-out for the last two weeks, and now their dishes are piled on the coffee table. Hux nudges one of the plates aside to safely pull his laptop toward himself, and complains about it.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do when Donnie and Holly are here,” he sighs. “Eat on the floor?” He props the laptop on his knee and opens it.

“We can just go out,” Ben suggests, earning a dubiously raised eyebrow from Hux.

“Every night for a week?” Hux clicks open a web browser and logs into his email. “I wish this stupid condo had a dining room.”

Ben chews on the inside of his cheek, fighting a smile. Hux had been dropping not so subtle hints like this for a month now. “Show me the house again,” Ben offers, mussing Hux’s hair with one hand.

Hux looks at him, lips parted around something he doesn’t say, then he bites his bottom lip and opens a new tab, types in a couple of letters and grabs the suggestion that Google offers; clearly, it’s a site he’s looked at often.

The image that comes up is one that Ben is familiar with, having looked at it often while in California, and he doesn’t need Hux to click through all the pictures and expound on the various charms of the Forest Glenn property; he can tell why Hux is so taken with it. The hardwood floors, the wide open archways, the provincial kitchen, and most especially, the towering trees in the lush backyard; it reminds Hux, Ben guesses, of his childhood home in Georgia.

“Anyway,” Hux is saying, spreading two fingers apart on the screen to make a picture of the dining room larger. “We could have an actual table. I like how this room looks out over the yard. And there’s a patio.” Hux stares at the picture for a few more moments, then closes it and sighs.

Ben’s pulse has picked up gradually while listening to the enthusiasm in Hux’s voice, like someone anticipating ripping a band-aid off. He sucks in a steadying breath, then says it. “Let’s go look at it.”

Hux’s eyes snap to him, surprised. “Ben. I’m just fantasy shopping. This place is way out of our … my … price range.”

“How do you know what my price range is?” Ben asks him, ignoring Hux’s muddled pronouns. Before Hux can ask questions, Ben turns the laptop toward himself and presses the red button that says _schedule a tour_. “Availability all day tomorrow,” he says, turning the computer back toward Hux. “Schedule it.”

Ben purposefully returns his attention to the television, flipping through channels without really seeing the content. He feels Hux staring at him, not acknowledging it because he doesn’t want Hux to ask him difficult questions, like _is he serious_.

Finally, Hux turns away, and out of the corner of his eye, Ben sees him pick a time. When Hux sets the laptop on the table again, he leaves it open, and the picture of the house on the screen. He curls against Ben’s side and looks at it until the screen saver comes on.

 

 

The agent that meets them at the house the next afternoon is pleasant, content to allow them to wander the property alone together. Ben can tell Hux is excited about it, despite that fact that he affects an air of disinterest to the woman who unlocks the door for them. He asks a few questions, but then says they’ll take a look themselves and let her know if they need anything.

Hux clings to Ben’s hand, fingers vice-tight, as they move through the house. The current owners have decorated it with furniture of fine, dark polished wood and Oriental rugs, shelves full of books lining the walls of the living room. There’s a fireplace, which Hux lingers in front of, staring up at the decorative mirror that hangs above it. Ben wonders if he’s thinking of the portrait that hangs over the fireplace in his childhood home, the one with his father.

They linger also in the kitchen, with its built-in oak cabinetry, the tile floors and granite counter tops. The kitchen had been, probably, the room they’d spent the most time in while in Georgia, talking, drinking coffee in the morning and whiskey in the afternoon, and waiting for food to cook. Hux runs his free hand over the lines of the copper pots and pans that hang against one wall, and Ben can almost see Aislain at the stove, preparing some delicious Southern dish in cookware just like that.

Their exploration is mostly silent, for Hux seems to be wandering in memories, and Ben is content just to hold his hand. They stand for a long moment in the dining room, hovering in front of the French doors that lead out onto a brick patio. Hux comments on the chandelier, exclaiming with evident delight that it reminds him of his dining room back home, as though this is the first feature of the house that has struck Hux as familiar.

They exchange a few words here and there, and Hux always speaks quietly, as though afraid to be overheard, or to disrupt some sense of reverence that seems to have overtaken him. By the time they’ve perused the master bathroom with its marble floor and massive clawfoot bathtub, Ben knows Hux is in love, and that there’s no turning back from this one.

Ben’s heartbeat is jumpy, his palms sweaty when Hux pushes the dining room door open and they stroll into the backyard. It’s a beautiful day, grass brilliant green under an intense sapphire sky, and the trees are a riot of red and yellow, leaves speckling the yard like tiny jewels. They pause just on the edge of the patio, Hux unwilling, Ben suspects, to make tracks out into grass he doesn’t own.

Neither of them say anything for a moment, Ben letting Hux sort through whatever complicated associations this place has stirred to the surface. Because he’s watching him closely, Ben sees the instant that Hux snaps out of it, a sigh lifting his shoulders, and the look of nostalgia drops from his features to be replaced with regret.

“Maybe someday,” Hux says. His voice is forlorn, but he tries on a stalwart smile for Ben.

Ben puts his arm around him and pulls him close to his side. “Fenced backyard,” he says, not entertaining Hux’s resignation. “We could get a dog.”

Hux leans his head against Ben’s shoulder, not taking the bait. “If we ever have a place like this, yeah, we could. I know you want one.”

Ben rubs Hux’s back, making a circle between his shoulder blades. He can’t help imagining the wide expanse of that yard in Georgia, just as green, and imagines how it must look now in the grips of autumn. He’s been on the run for so long, that he’s forgotten what _home_ feels like, what it’s like to have a fond memory of a place, until the experience of going home with Hux. It’s born, Ben is sure, of the associations that trip had formed; kissing Hux for the first time while a storm raged outside, slipping his dog-tags over Hux’s neck in the tree-house, walking hand in hand through the rain, waking up with Hux in his arms to the peaceful sounds of the country. He can see himself here, can see himself making new memories like that which belong only to them, and that no matter where he is he can return to those memories, and be home.

“That tree,” Ben says, looking at the largest of them, an oak perhaps. “Good place to build a tree-house for a kid someday.”

That hits a nerve for Hux, apparently, because he looks up sharply at Ben and then peels himself off his shoulder. “You want kids?”

Ben remains staring at the tree with his heart in his throat. He shrugs one shoulder. “Maybe.” Apprehensively, he looks at Hux, who is regarding him with something like wonder. Before he can ask Ben to elaborate on that, Ben turns toward him, putting hands on either side of Hux’s face, and leans down to kiss him, their foreheads touching. “Before that, though, this house. A table. A dog. A garden in the backyard…”

“Ben.” Hux brings his hands up to circle Ben’s wrists, his eyes wide and a shade of dark green. “Don’t fuck with me.” His voice is just a touch unsteady.

“I’m not fucking with you,” Ben says, releasing Hux’s face and carding a hand back through his red hair, disordering it. For once, Hux doesn’t seem to notice.

“I told you this place is too much,” Hux goes on. “It’s over half a million. I was just dreaming.”

Ben sighs, stuffs his hands in his pockets. He swivels on his heels, looking back at the house. He’d made up his mind about this in California, that if Hux liked the house when he saw it, that this was a plunge he’s prepared to take.

“I have money,” Ben says, then clears his throat around a sudden tightness. He looks back to Hux. “When my grandfather died, he left me more than just the cabin in New York.”

Hux’s mouth opens, stays that way for a moment, then closes again.

Ben goes on. “I haven’t touched the money. It always felt too … final. Like forgiving him for what he did. But maybe it’s time.”

Hux puts his hand over his mouth then, fingers pressing his lips down like he’s trying to force himself not to speak. Ben just watches him, his emotions mixed; part of him is being tugged by the ever-present ache that Anakin Skywalker’s death had left behind, part of him is longing to be free of it and move on, and all of him is anxious. This is tangible, a legal commitment, a thread that will draw them together in a lasting way.

Hux finally drops his hand, taking a step closer until he’s inches from Ben. He lifts his hand now to Ben’s chest, rests it there. “You’re serious.”

Ben nods.

Hux takes a deep, shuddering breath. “So … what? Do you mean you’ll just … buy it? And I’ll pay … rent? I guess?” Hux's cheeks flush at that, plainly not finding that arrangement appealing.

Ben puts an arm around him again, hugs him close. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches the real estate agent coming to the patio door, halting there, seeming keen that a moment of decision is afoot.

“We can worry about logistics later,” Ben reassures Hux. “But it will belong to us both.”

Hux is silent a moment, and Ben can almost sense his mind working. “You’ve thought about this already, haven’t you?” Hux asks in a small voice, sounding stunned.

“I already moved the money around,” Ben responds. He’d been fairly sure of Hux’s reaction, though less sure of his complicity.

“You want to be stuck with me for the next thirty years?” Hux asks, the words coming out on the tail of a nervous laugh.

Ben leans his cheek against Hux. "Yes," Ben says. “I do.”

 

* * *

 

The rest of the week passes in a blur. Hux proves himself to be remarkably adept with financial details, and has assiduously done his research about buying a home. They had visited the house on Saturday, and by Monday inspections are scheduled, the owner contacted with a tentative offer, and Hux has moved on to furniture shopping online.  

Hux’s anxiety about his brother’s visit is eclipsed by his stunned excitement at buying what is, for all practical purposes, his dream house with the man he loves, and he alleviates what nervous energy he does have by cleaning and reorganizing obsessively, until Ben finally tells him to stop.

Hux can’t quite figure Ben out over the next week, either. He grows increasingly quiet as the days pass, not brooding, really, but seeming to be preoccupied with something. Whatever it is, Ben denies it when Hux asks about it, plastering on a smile and distracting Hux with lips and hands. He’s amenable enough to Hux’s furniture browsing, offering opinions on what they need and what they can keep.

At no point during this whirlwind of impending commitment do they discuss the fact that their engagement is still unofficial.

Donnie and Holly arrive the following weekend, and despite the fact that they don’t have the keys yet, they take them out to see the place. It’s surreal, still, to Hux, who feels that at any moment he is going to wake up, and be alone again in his bed while Ben is in California.

 

Hux’s birthday is on a Tuesday, the day before Halloween, and Ben wakes him up with a well-placed tongue, forcing Hux to hide his face beneath a pillow so as not to wake up everyone in the house with the sounds of his pleasure. He’s thoroughly wrung out in the most delicious way by the time he gets out of the shower, spending longer than normal getting ready, letting the flush of sex fade from his pale skin before getting dressed.

He finds Ben in the closet, zipping his suitcase closed. “You’re not leaving me again are you?” Hux jokes, and is surprised when Ben whirls on him and gives him a startled look.

“No,” Ben answers a bit too quickly, standing up and replacing the suitcase on the top shelf. He turns around, leans in and kisses Hux. “At least not for long. I have to run out somewhere today. I was thinking of taking Donnie.”

Hux’s brow wrinkles, but he nods. Ben and Donnie seem to have formed quite the connection over the last few days, reminding Hux that they’re closer in age than he and his brother are. Ben seems quite interested in Donnie’s public health relations work at the CDC, and they both have a ridiculous obsession with discussing hypothetical apocalyptic futures. Hus is charmed, honestly, by the idea of Ben and Donnie bonding.

He starts to grow suspicious, however, when it becomes clear that he’s being shuffled out of the house himself after breakfast. So far, they’ve been out to eat for most meals, saving the informal foods like bagels for eating at the kitchen island; that experience has been a round of musical chairs with Hux’s Southern family refusing to let either he or Ben stand up to eat in their own house.  

Now, Holly is insisting on gathering up the trash from their breakfast while Ben and Donnie are putting on their shoes, and she’s distracting Hux with questions about food they do and don’t have in their house and planning a grocery list.

“I hadn’t planned to cook,” Hux says, opening the refrigerator to answer the question of whether they had any butter.

Holly turns Hux’s spice rack, tracing the labels with manicured nails. “You don’t have a jack-o-lantern, either, Armie,” she chides, smirking at him. “Your mother would be appalled.”

Hux snorts, standing before the open refrigerator door having forgotten why he opened it. Ben is hovering by the front door talking to Donnie too quietly for Hux to overhear, and it’s distracting him. Ben shrugs into a jacket and takes his keys out of their bowl, and he opens the door a crack before he seems to remember Hux. He crosses to him, leans over the refrigerator door, and kisses his cheek with a smile.

“Get some wine while you’re out,” he says. “And beer.”

“Why am I going to the store?” Hux asks, eyebrows shooting up.

It’s Holly that responds, as Ben is already walking away again. “Because I’m making you a birthday dinner,” she says. “Do you have any butter or not?”

Hux’s attention snaps back to the shelves, and he locates a tub of margarine, brandishing it at Holly.

She wrinkles her nose. “That doesn’t count. You’re from the South. You know this.”

Hux shrugs and puts it back on the shelf, closing the door. “Ben likes it, for some reason.”

As if on cue, the front door closes, and Hux looks around to find Ben and his brother gone. “What is going on?” he asks. “I feel like I’m part of some thinly veiled conspiracy.”

Holly laughs. “You are. Just go with it. Go put your shoes on.”

Hux heaves a dramatic sigh, but he obeys, and fifteen minutes later, they are strolling down the street together, cloth bags for groceries tucked under their arms. Hux has no idea how they are going to carry a pumpkin home, much less beer, and it makes him think of the house they’d put a two hundred thousand dollar down payment on two days ago. Most of that money had been from Ben’s trust fund, and Hux suspects that wasn’t the end of it, as Ben let it go without batting an eye.

“So are you going to tell me what they’re up to?” Hux asks, peering at Holly out of the corner of his eye. It’s another gorgeous day, the sky pale blue with high, wispy white clouds, and the air is redolent with the smell of crushed leaves.

Holly smiles, tugging her knitted cap farther over her ears. “Not a chance. Are you two still going down for Christmas?”

Hux frowns at the abrupt change of subject, decides to ignore it. “Are they planning a surprise party? Because I swear to God…”

“Hux!” Holly laughs. “It’s not a surprise party. I promise.”

Hux snorts, turning his attention back to the sidewalk for a moment when he almost collides with a fire hydrant. He skirts it, catches back up with Holly. “Good. Ben would have to hire people to come to it, since I have like, two friends.”

“Why are you avoiding my question?” Holly nudges him with her shoulder.

Hux sighs. He had been avoiding it, because he’s not ready for the conversation he knows he needs to have with his mother. The one where he tells her the truth before she gets any more carried away with wedding planning.

“We’re still planning on it, yes,” he says, eyeing her, and deciding to test the waters with Holly instead of his brother. He’d intended to come clean while they were here, the lie nagging at him more because by this evening, when they all go out as planned with Phasma, hiding the truth would become a circus act because Phasma knew, and Hux’s family didn’t.

Holly says nothing as Hux explains, going into perhaps more detail than needed about everything that had happened with he and Ben in the last two years, and as Hux winds up the story with an awkward _“but I’m hoping he asks me soon,”_ Holly gives him an incredulous look.

“You know you have to tell your brother,” she says.

They’ve arrived at the grocery market on Elm and Hux tugs the door open, holding it for his sister-in-law. “I know,” he sighs. “But … really? That’s all you have to say? Not ‘Hux you’re a pathetic loser?”

Holly shrugs, grabbing a cart. Hux wanders beside her, having no clue what they’re here for beyond butter. “I mean … it’s kind of a romantic story,” Holly muses. “Beyond the lying to everyone for months, part. Especially your mother.”

Hux scrubs a hand over his face, across his unhappy expression. “Yeah. I know.”

“Does Ben’s family know?” Holly stops their cart in the produce section, picking up an onion and glancing at Hux.

Hux shakes his head. “No. I did end up meeting one of Ben’s old friends, though, on Facebook. I got Ben’s parents’ contact information from him. I haven’t decided how to bring it up yet, though.”

Holly drops the onion into a translucent green bag and ties it. “Maybe there’s a reason he doesn’t want to talk to them.”

Absently picking up a red potato, Hux turns it over in his hands. “He told me once that he intends to get in touch with him at some point. I think he’s just scared they’ll be disappointed in him.” He looks at Holly when she plucks the potato out of his hand, bagging that too. “But how could anyone be disappointed in him?”

She smiles. “You really are crazy about him, aren’t you?”

Hux returns the smile, feeling the barest color rise in his cheeks. “Completely mad,” he confirms.

Holly sorts through the selection of potatoes, Hux useless in her orbit. “So why don’t _you_ just ask _him_?”

That startles Hux, mostly because he’s never thought of it. And why not? That would make everything simpler.

And yet.

“I don’t know. I just feel like … he has more things to work through than I do. I feel like if I push him before he’s ready, I’ll scare him away.”

“You just bought a house with him, Armie.”

The cart starts again, and they move to the back of the store while Hux mulls this over. He doesn’t have a good response to that, part of him feeling like a house, a tangible, solid thing with a mortgage, is more difficult to get out of than a marriage. _Should_ he ask Ben? Is buying the house, which is clearly a large investment for Ben, a clue that Hux should be seeing? It just feels like there are still missing pieces in their puzzle, that Ben is holding onto those pieces and only laying them on the table when he’s ready.

Gradually, he and Holly’s conversation turns to more mundane topics, the only other thing she seems compelled to say about the subject of Hux’s fake engagement being to elicit another promise that he will tell Donnie, and soon. Holly insists on having coffee at the in-store shop, where they talk about she and Donnie’s plans to start a family, which takes Hux’s mind fully off the subject of his own drama, more excited than he’d thought he would ever be at the idea of being an uncle.

They take a cab back to the condo, loaded down with groceries, a fair sized pumpkin, and an assortment of alcohol. By the time Hux is wrestling the front door open with his arm full of bags, he’s completely forgotten about whatever mysterious thing had led Ben and Donnie out of the house earlier that morning.

But he remembers the second the door swings open.

Standing in the center of their living room, nearly filling the remaining space, is his table.

Hux is too stunned by the sight of it to move out of the doorway; it’s incongruous with the room but completely perfect with it’s dark wood finish and elegant, bowed legs that taper toward the carpet. There are six chairs, all matching, with high backs that look hand-carved in their delicate detail.

Hux crosses the room slowly, pausing only to drop his bags on the counter. Outside, the cab is waiting with another armload, but Hux has forgotten about that. He runs his fingers over the beautiful lines of one chair, feels the silk-smooth surface of the table-top, recognizing it as an antique that has been kept in immaculate condition. And likely cost a bloody fortune.

The glass door to the deck slides open, emitting voices that had been muffled before, one of them, Donnie’s, dissolving in laughter. Hux turns to look just as Ben meets his eyes, and Hux’s heart clenches at the look of shy hope on his face.

Moving across the room with four long strides, Hux flings himself into Ben’s arms, kissing him hard. Ben grunts with surprise, but Hux’s reaction makes him smile, and Hux kisses the curve of that expression. He senses Donnie walk past them, his voice fading outside with Holly’s, leaving them alone for a moment.

“How,” Hux asks between kisses, “do you manage to be so fucking perfect?”

Drawing back to await an answer, grinning with giddy happiness, he sees Ben’s cheeks turn pink.

“I hope you like it,” Ben says shyly.

“I love it,” Hux insists, kissing him again. “And I love you.” He almost adds, right then and there, “ _and I want to marry you.”_

Ben nuzzles him, nose pressed to the underside of Hux’s ear. “I’m glad,” he whispers. “I love you, too. I have…”

Whatever Ben was going to say is interrupted by Donnie and Holly coming back inside, and Hux turns in Ben’s embrace to see them laying the last of the groceries and the pumpkin on the counter.

 

What follows is perhaps the best birthday Hux remembers ever having, which is significant to him considering he’d given up trying to enjoy his birthday after he turned thirty; it just seemed like being forced to acknowledge that another year had gone by, just like the one before it.

Now, however, he feels like he’s celebrating the beginning of his life, rather than the slow, monotonous plod toward the end. He sits on the deck with Donnie and a cup of tea, courtesy of Holly, and watches Ben turn a pumpkin into a work of art, imagining him doing this for years to come and deciding it will be his birthday tradition from now on.

The apartment is filled with delicious aromas, wafting outside as Holly cooks, and Hux has a moment of indecision about his table when the food is ready, suddenly wary of putting anything on it. This necessarily makes his brother burst out laughing, and even Ben picks on him good-naturedly, resulting in Hux tugging a sheet out of the linen closet as a makeshift tablecloth.

Dinner is sublime: fried chicken and mashed potatoes and gravy, fresh green beans with bacon, iced tea, and a genuine apple pie that makes Hux feel like the South has been transported here to his living room. Sitting around a real table feels like home, like the thing he’s been missing ever since he ran away from Georgia, and he wonders if Ben planned it this way. Like a blessing, almost, for the first piece of furniture they own as a couple.

 

* * *

 

 

Ben watches Hux throughout dinner, mesmerized by his bright smile and his easy laughter. He imagines himself slowly becoming immersed in this family, feeling warm and included, and like in Hux’s brother and sister-in-law he’s finding siblings of his own.

He can’t help but be anxious, however, attention constantly drawn to the weight of the ring in the pocket of his hooded sweatshirt, unable to pick the right moment with other people around. He couldn’t enlist their help, because they didn’t know that he and Hux aren't actually engaged, that it isn't yet _real._

After dinner, Ben offers to help Holly clean up the kitchen, and refuses to be shooed away. Hux and Donnie are expelled easily, however, and Ben sees them slipping out onto the porch. He and Holly make short work of the kitchen, chatting about books they have both read. Afterward, Ben takes a round of beers out of the refrigerator. He hands Holly one, then takes a drink of his, heading for the open door to the deck to offer Hux and Donnie one.

The first clue that something is wrong is Hux’s posture. He’s leaning on the deck railing, head drooping, pale fingers holding a cigarette to his lips. Ben has never seen Hux smoke before, and the image makes him stop. He stands frozen just inside the door, not meaning to listen, but unable to move away.

Donnie is speaking, his voice a tight growl. “You need to fucking tell Ma, Armie. She’s already spent money she doesn’t have on this bullshit.”

Hux taps ash off his cigarette, watching it fall to the sidewalk below. “I’ll tell her. And I’ll reimburse her…” His voice trails off, like he was going to say something else, but stops himself.

“Don’t do it until after Christmas,” Donnie says. “It’s already going to be hard enough without… what are you even going to tell her?”

“I don’t know,” Hux sighs, looking toward the heavens now. Ben can see a smattering of stars beginning to peek through the canopy. The sky is lilac and navy blue.

Ben almost steps out on the porch then, thinking he could just put an end to this, but then Donnie speaks again.

“Why would you do something like this, Armitage? What was the point of lying about it?”

Hux turns his face toward his brother. “Because,” he snaps, then lowers his voice. “Because I wanted for one damn minute to be like everyone else. Not have everyone feel sorry for me because I’m alone. You don’t know what that feels like. I’m thirty-five. Everyone else is married, has a house with a white picket fence, a labrador and two point five kids. I just want what everyone else has.”

Donnie says something else, but Ben doesn’t hear him. He’s too caught in Hux’s words, how he just wants to be like everyone else, feeling his age like a clock counting down the time. Is that all any of this is to him? Just a way not to be alone? The tiny seeds of doubt that always lie just below his surface sprout, bloom inside his chest, fed with his colossal pool of self doubt. The logical part of his mind tells him that he’s being neurotic, that Hux loves him for who he is, but the demon on his shoulder asks him how that could really be true, when there is still so much that Hux doesn’t know.

At that moment, the doorbell rings, signalling, most likely, Phasma’s arrival. Ben jumps, startled by it, and Hux turns around at that moment, catching his eye and smiling; there’s a hint of sadness in the expression.

He steps over to Ben, takes the beers out of his hand, and passes one to Donnie. He leans in and kisses Ben’s cheek. “Thank you, baby,” he says quietly, then walks across the room to answer the door.

Donnie gives Ben a tight smile, then turns to look out over the street, lost in his own thoughts. Ben greets Phasma, lulled for a bit by the banal conversation and the presentation of gifts, and then retires to their bedroom to change for the pub crawl. He drops the sweatshirt on the bed, pulling on a fresh button up, and tries to convince himself that he really should do this. That Hux wants him to.

In the end, because he can't shake the anxiety, he hides the ring in the closet again, and goes out to join Hux without it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Here](https://www.redfin.com/IL/Chicago/6776-N-Keota-Ave-60646/home/13592989) is the house. :)


	7. Out Into Empty Air

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This didn't take the turn I thought it would. Ben's character writes himself - I just type the words. I'm incredibly nervous posting this, because I have no idea if I did these concepts justice. I hope so.

Hux never imagined that chaos could be thrilling.

The weeks that follow his birthday feel like his life is being gradually bound to Ben’s one stitch at a time, each logistical detail of their impending move a thread in the tapestry. Closing on the house is a blissfully expedient process, with the fact that Ben had already sought approval for a home loan prior to leaving for California giving Hux some insight into how much thought Ben had put into the idea. When they sign the papers, both of their names are listed: _joint tenants with right of survivorship._ It belongs to both of them, this place with a fenced yard and a good tree for building treehouses, a place for a garden and a dog.

Ben gets distracted at the end of November with the necessity of buying a car, which, Hux finds out, will actually be the first car Ben has ever owned. The house on Keota Avenue unfortunately has exactly one flaw, in Hux’s reluctant admission; it’s nowhere near any public transportation hub.

Hux attempts, at first, to stay out of the search for a vehicle, making the casual comment that it seems like he needs to do his own shopping for the same reason. Ben gives him an exasperated look at that, however, and tells him it makes no sense for them to have two cars when they work in the same part of the city and already share a schedule. Hux gives in, and encourages Ben’s inclination toward something less practical and more entertaining. By the beginning of December, just as most of their condo is packed and ready to be loaded onto the rental truck, they become co-owners of an Audi RS 7 in _Mythos Black_ (of course), the kind of car that Ben had wanted as a teenager. It’s impractical for city life, gets abysmal gas mileage, is far too expensive, but Ben loves it, and so Hux does too.

Outside that indulgent experience, Ben doesn’t seem to share the enthusiasm that has Hux in a constant flurry of planning and activity; in fact, as the weeks pass, he seems to grow increasingly irritable, distracted. He talks less, his sleep is often restless, and their sex life suffers. Hux begins to fear that Ben has bitten off more than he wants to chew, and tries more than once to have that conversation, only to eventually have his head bitten off and told to drop the subject. When Hux had tried to discern what was wrong with him, Ben swept it under a rug labeled _“I just get this way sometimes,”_ and then refused to discuss it further. It ebbs and flows, though, and Hux chalks it up to stress and lackluster rest, promising himself he’ll revisit the matter whether Ben likes it or not if things haven’t changed by the time they are settled in their new home.

They move into their new home, officially, on the fifteenth of December, just five days before their trip to Georgia is booked. They barely have time to unpack their bedroom before they are packing suitcases to travel; Christmas presents are last minute affairs courtesy of Amazon and delivered straight to their destination. How to find a compromise around celebrating the holidays between a Jew and an Irish Catholic leads to one of the first bright moments they’ve had in months, when they laughingly create their own holiday with their own completely unrelated fledgling traditions, and schedule it for January, a month Hux traditionally has abhorred.

The holiday in Georgia proves to be more stressful than Hux had imagined; his mother is full of wedding plans, Ben takes on the demeanor of a block of ice, and his brother has perfected a host of dark looks. Exasperated, Hux finally takes his mother aside and tells her that they just bought a house and Ben still has some things to work out with his family and can they just put wedding plans on the backburner for now?

She’s more than accommodating about it, lets the subject drop, and Hux begins to believe they might have a good holiday together until over hot-chocolate one evening Aislain offers to help Ben with whatever “things” he has to work out with his family. Hux can’t come to his rescue quickly enough, and Ben flounders through it, finally forced to say that he doesn’t want to talk about it. It leads to the first real argument he and Hux have, half-whispered behind their bedroom door, with Hux saying he’d just been trying to help, and Ben saying maybe he should try keeping his mouth shut if helping is his goal.

By the time they get home, they are barely speaking to each other, and to Hux it feels like some dark, otherworldly thing has taken up residence in the man he loves. It’s a different creature than the anxious, overwrought Ben that is born of too little sleep; this Ben doesn’t want to get out of bed in the morning, barely touches any food he’s offered, and seems to have little interest in the things that were seemingly important to him just a month before. Hux being one of them, the new house another.

It’s on the twenty-eighth of December, a Saturday, when the downward spiral hits rock bottom.

 

The alarm beeps that morning at four A.M., as it always does. Hux just lets it sound, hoping it will rouse Ben, but when it escalates to its third, shrill pitch, Hux sighs, levers himself up, and leans over Ben to shut it off. There’s no danger of falling back asleep at this point; the moment he’d woken his awareness had turned fully on, tuning in to see if something would, perhaps, be different this morning. While in Georgia, Hux had tried to be consistent with their routine, dutifully setting his phone to go off at the same hour, but Ben had refused to get up, mumbling that he needed a break, even though Hux knew better. Hux had nurtured the hope that now that they are back in their own home, Ben would find it easier to get back on track.

Hux settles down in bed again, Ben’s back to him. He stares for a time at the copper tattoo of the fox, recalling Ben’s mischievous sense of humor and the glint in his eyes when he’d shown it to Hux for the first time. The way he’d made such passionate, needy love to him afterward. They’d hardly even kissed in weeks, and Hux couldn’t understand what he’d done wrong; whatever it was, it had started the night of his birthday, so Hux could only guess it had something to do with him telling Donnie about the nature of their engagement. Every time Hux tried to bring it up, however, Ben downplayed it, said it wasn’t a big deal, that of course he had to tell his family.

Hux shifts his hand out of the blankets, reaching up to stroke the flat of his palm along Ben’s arm, smoothing it over the curve of his shoulder, stroking his hair back. Ben stirs, turning his face into the pillow, rolling partly away from him. Hux’s chest swells with a quiet sigh. He shuffles forward, presses a kiss to Ben’s spine.

“Do you want to get up?” he asks quietly, knowing from the way Ben is breathing that he’s awake.

“No,” Ben mumbles into the pillow.

Hux bites back the same encouraging speech that he’d tried the last several mornings, about Ben’s routine and how Hux knows it made him feel better. Instead, he decides to try a different approach, snaking an arm around him and trailing his fingers over Ben’s chest, across the outline of his muscular torso.

“We could get our exercise another way,” Hux murmurs against the back of Ben’s neck, feeling a spark of nerves as he strokes suggestive fingers over the flat plane below Ben’s navel.

Ben moves then, and a hand closes over Hux’s wrist. His grip is too hard at first, and Hux flinches, but the fingers relax immediately, and Ben pulls his hand up to his chest, settling it there and letting go of him. He says nothing, offering no explanation which Hux can attempt to understand, like _I’m too tired,_ or _I’m not in the mood._

Somehow, the silent rejection hurts more.

Hux remains with his arm wrapped stiffly around Ben for perhaps ten minutes, feeling anxious and confused and gradually exhausted from the effort of not speaking, not trying to hash out whatever is bothering Ben here and now. Finally, when his shoulder muscles start to get stiff and he can feel the edge of panic in his chest, Hux withdraws his arm slowly, even though he knows Ben is still awake. Pushing back the covers, he slides out of bed and pads quietly to the bathroom.

He emerges into the kitchen after washing his face, turning on the light and taking a deep breath in the comforting golden glow. It’s still dark outside, dawn yet hours away; this far out of the city, everything is sleepy and peaceful on their street, the snow a bluish gray beneath the overcast sky, bare branches of the trees limned in muted white.

Hux starts a pot of coffee, then leans against the counter with his chilly hands wrapped around a steaming cup, sipping pensively. The kitchen is still stacked with boxes, everything carefully labeled with Hux’s neat, precise hand. He can’t help wondering, for the hundredth time, if Ben regrets this decision. It had all been such a whirlwind, and as he drinks his coffee, Hux tries to recall the conversations they’d had about it after that impulsive agreement here in the backyard. Had Ben expressed any hesitation? Hux sighs, realizing that he’d been too caught up in the excitement to notice, and he sets his coffee aside when it begins to sour around the anxious knot in his stomach.

Hux crosses to the far counter, turns a box to face him, and picks up the Xacto knife lying nearby. Slitting the brown packing tape that holds the flaps closed, Hux lifts out the first of their Christmas gifts from his mother, unwinding the crumpled wrapping paper sloppily replaced for packing. It’s a copper spoon rest, and Hux holds it, thinking back to Christmas morning and how excited his mother had been to give them as many of the things she could imagine they’d need for their kitchen, for sharing a life in this house.

Hux lets the wrapping paper fall to the floor, and sets the spoon rest on the stove. He slowly unpacks the remainder of the box, until he’s surrounded in bright, discarded paper and assorted cookware is scattered all over the counters. He’s contemplating it when Millicent slinks into the kitchen, green eyes round and concerned.

Smiling softly, Hux stoops and gathers her into his arms; straightening, he holds her against his chest, absently rubbing the skin behind her ears with one hand. She’d yet to get used to this new house, and this is the first time Hux has seen her since they’d gotten home the day before.

“Mille,” he says, his voice sounding too loud in the quiet kitchen, “what should I do with all this stuff?” Her rumbling purr is Hux’s only answer.

Would Ben want these things in a cabinet? Hanging up? Does he not want them at all? Glancing through the open arch that leads out of the kitchen, Hux half hopes to see a sleepy Ben wandering down the hallway, drawn downstairs by the smell of fresh coffee.

Sighing, Hux kisses the top of Millie’s head, setting her down. She bounds out of the kitchen, leaving Hux alone again. Instead of dealing with the placement of cookware, Hux decides to focus on something easy, and opens the box that they’d packed their silverware in. Fitting the flatware organizer into the drawer that coincides with where they’d kept it at the old condo, Hux starts returning knives and spoons and forks to their respective cubbies. Hux’s sets all match, with their copper handles and even numbers, and when packing, Hux had gone so far as to bind up the mismatched, cheap stuff that Ben had accumulated, intending to talk him into throwing it out, but now he peels the rubber band away and mixes it in with his own. He stands staring down at the drawer afterward, mind blank but for the thought that he doesn’t want it to be any other way.

The light outside the window has grown marginally brighter by the time Hux has unpacked all the spices and baking products and finished lining the drawers with adhesive paper. Surprised at the passage of time, Hux glances through the frosted glass and sighs, seeing that snow is falling heavily. It will mean shoveling the walks and the driveway, as they’ve yet to buy a snow blower.

By ten o’clock, Ben still hasn’t risen, and Hux goes back upstairs to check on him. He doesn’t appear to have moved from where Hux had left him, eyes still closed and blankets pulled nearly over his head. Millicent is curled on the pillow near his head, which is somewhat of a comfort, Hux thinks. It feels like more than Hux can do for him. He entertains the idea of waking Ben up to ask him if he wants breakfast, but realizes they have nothing to cook.

Dressing as quietly as he can, standing in the closet with the door closed, Hux feels like a ghost haunting his own home. Like somehow he doesn’t belong here. This is supposed to be the start of a new life, the first steps on a path that might lead someday, if Ben had been serious, to a family, which is an idea Hux had never dared entertain seriously.

Shrugging into a sweater, Hux catches a glimpse of the steel gray ammunition case on the top shelf, wondering what secrets Ben has inside. Are there hints to what darkness is consuming him in the bedroom beyond? Hux thinks of looking, but only for a split second, unwilling to betray Ben’s trust that way.

Ben once again has not moved when Hux emerges from the closet, but this time Hux goes to the bed and sinks down beside him, stroking his hair.

“I’m going to the store,” he tells him. “Do you want to come with me?”

“No,” Ben mumbles, barely audible.

Hux suppresses a sigh, continues stroking Ben’s hair. “Do you want anything? Do you need medicine?” Hux is sure whatever medicine Ben needs is not something he can buy at the local market. “What do you want me to get for you to eat?”

Ben sighs, rolls over away from Hux. “I don’t care. Just … whatever.”

A pulse of indignance swells in Hux’s chest, but he swallows past it. He starts to push himself off the bed, but stops, leaning down and kissing the side of Ben’s head. His hair is unwashed, smells of sweat, but somehow still good.

Hux leaves him there, making his way back to the kitchen where he keys in a grocery list on his phone, opening various cabinets and the refrigerator as he does so, to picture what needs to fill the shelves.

He pulls on gloves and a scarf at the door, tugging a hat down over his lank, overlong hair, then steps out into the snow.

Driving the new car makes Hux nervous, not only because of the weather, but because it still doesn’t feel like _their_ car; he can’t shake the sensation that he’s stolen off with it while Ben wasn’t looking. Ben of course had insisted it belongs to both of them, despite that fact that yet again the large portion of its down payment had come from Ben’s trust fund.

Hux drives slowly, taking an overlong time to brake, and pulls into the near-empty grocery store parking lot having taken nearly twenty minutes to go two miles. Trudging through the snow, he tries to fight away the bitter feeling in his chest, tries to replace it with compassion, but it’s difficult to do with no information from Ben, no idea what exactly he’s supposed to have compassion for.

The cheerful elevator music inside the store is incongruous to Hux’s mood, and he finds himself scowling as he wanders the aisles, distracted enough that he has to go back for things that he misses from his list. He can’t help thinking that _this_ , the mundane stuff like shopping for groceries together, is part of what he’d wanted, not worrying alone over whether Ben would be in the mood for spaghetti or steak tonight, or what kind of cereal he feels like having this week. It feels like Hux’s dream house has done little more than rob him of Ben, and it makes him resentful.

He’s so lost in thought by the time he’s pulling back into the driveway that he doesn’t notice the car parked alongside the street that hadn’t been there before, idling beneath a coating of snow with the windshield wipers running. Hux guides the Audi into the detached garage, sits for a moment with it still running while he answers a text from Phasma.

 

_Phasma (12:15 pm): You should just ask him what’s wrong._

 

_Hux (12:40 pm): That’s like trying to talk to a brick wall. He’s totally shut me out._

 

_Phasma (12:41 pm): give him some space Hux. He’ll come around._

 

_Hux (12:41 pm): Come around from what? What did I do?_

 

_Phasma (12:42 pm): i know this may come as a surprise babe but the whole world doesn’t revolve around you._

 

_Hux (12:42 pm): What the hell does that mean?_

 

_Phasma (12:44 pm): he’s got a lot going on in his head. Try reading about how depression works._

 

_Hux (12:45 pm) I know how depression works! You are no help. >:( _

 

_Phasma (12:45 pm) :P love you too_

 

Hux starts to type another reply, then sighs and shoves his phone back in his pocket. It had of course been obvious to him that Ben was dealing with some kind of depression, but Phasma had maybe hit the nail on the head suggesting that Hux assumed it _had_ to have something to do with him. Maybe this is just a natural thing, and needs to run its course. It makes Hux feel bad for harboring frustration toward Ben, and he’s considering what he can do to help him again as he steps out of the car and circles to open the trunk.

A door slamming behind him makes Hux turn, peering through the falling snow at figure that has just emerged from the car across the street. It’s a man, bundled in coat and scarf and a knitted brown hat, and there’s something familiar about him that Hux can’t place. They regard each other for a moment, and then the man begins to walk toward him.

Hux straightens, feeling an odd pulse of defensiveness as the figure makes tracks across the driveway that is now obscured under nearly two inches of snow. The man’s posture is confident, just shy of a swagger, as though approaching strangers on their own turf is something he does every day. Hux turns to face him fully, muscles tense.

“Can I help you?” he calls out, before the man is within arm’s length.

The other man’s step slows, and he’s close enough now that Hux can see the dusky hue of his skin, dark hair curling over the hem of his knit cap. “Armitage Hux?” he asks.

Hux doesn’t answer for a few seconds, mind racing, trying to place who this might be. Someone with business related to the house? A new neighbor? Then he realizes he’s been silent overlong, so he nods.

“Yes,” he has to clear his throat when the word comes out as a croak, his voice having been little used over the past forty-eight hours. “I’m Hux. You are?”

The other man’s handsome face splits into a wide grin, teeth white against the five o’clock shadow on his cheeks. He sticks a gloved hand out, and Hux just stares at it.

“Captain Poe Dameron,” he announces.

Hux feels the ground try to lurch out from under him, a conversation months ago on Facebook rushing to the surface of his memory, details muddled by alcohol. His head pounds, a warning bell going off, and his pulse climbs.

“What are you doing here?” Hux barks, clutching the car keys tight in his gloved palm.

Poe raises both eyebrows, slowly drops the extended hand that Hux had neglected to shake in his alarm. “I wanted to stop by to see if I could talk with Ben, honestly,” he admits. “I have some news I think he needs to hear.”

“You couldn’t call?” Hux dimly realizes he’s being rude, but the words just tumble out. “And how are you just stopping by? Don’t you live in … Jersey or something?”  Hux can barely recall what they’d talked about that night.

Poe shoves his hands in his pockets now. “Relax, buddy,” he says, like he’s talking to an animal with its hackles raised. “My wife is in town for an art convention. Thought I’d take a chance. I can go if it’s a problem.”

Hux’s eyes flick from Poe’s car back to Poe. “How did you find our house?” he asks cautiously.

Poe grins, which isn’t the expression Hux feels matches this situation. “You posted about a hundred pictures of the place. Including you two in front of the mailbox.” When Hux just looks at him blankly, Poe adds: “On Facebook.”

Something about Poe’s posture and his open, earnest expression makes Hux relax. He had, after all, posted those pictures. And maybe Ben’s old military buddy would have some idea what to do for him. Could talk to him when Hux apparently could not.

Finally, Hux holds out his hand. “You’re a bit of a stalker, then?” he says, softening the accusation with a smile.

Poe grasps his hand, grip like solid steel. “Just efficient,” he counters. “Want me to help you get those groceries inside?”

 

* * *

 

Ben’s eyelids flutter open, and he lays in his cocoon of blankets listening, trying to discern what has pulled him back to the surface of his dreamless sleep. Rolling over and looking at the clock, he groans when he sees that it’s nearly one-thirty in the afternoon, and then squeezes his eyes shut again when memories of this morning flit across his consciousness.

 _Hux, waking up loyally at four, offering to get up with him, Hux’s soft fingers on his belly, then later in his hair, stroking it back and asking him if he wanted to go to the store._ Everything about the past few days is a blur, from suffering through watching Hux pretend to be engaged to him in Georgia, to coming home the day before, taking two of his pills, and going to bed.

Ben pushes the covers down, feeling sluggish, mind not fully online, and struggles upright. His limbs feel leaden, his head heavy like it’s stuffed full of wet wool. Pushing himself to his feet, he shuffles zombie-like into the master bathroom, uses the toilet, then turns on the faucet to splash water on his face, exhaling a gasp at the shock of cold. He rubs at his cheeks, forehead, presses the heels of his palms hard into his eyes, trying to scrub the bleary, sticky feeling from them. Grabbing a bottle of mouthwash, he tries to expel the sick-sweet taste from his mouth, but the after effects of his medicine just make the cinnamon flavored liquid cloying, and he spits it out, gagging, and tries not to vomit into the sink.

He stands for a long time leaning against the marble counter top, head drooping and eyes closed, waiting for the world to stop pressing down on him. He can’t remember when the last time he’d eaten anything had been, or when he’d last taken a shower. Turning his head, he looks at the shower, considers it, but ultimately decides it’s too complicated, so he walks back into the bedroom and dresses in the dark, pulling on the jeans and the t-shirt he’d dropped in the floor the day before.

He shuffles down the hall in his bare feet, craving a glass of water and wondering if Hux is back from the store yet. He knows they need to talk about what to say to Hux’s mother, to work through the argument they’d had in Georgia, but Ben can barely form coherent thoughts, let alone have a complicated discussion.

He’s two steps from the bottom of the staircase when something registers: voices, and not just one. Ben freezes, confusion locking him in place while he tries to discern who is in his house, then relaxes slowly when he recognizes Hux’s laughter overlaying the unfamiliar pitch of the second person. A male, Ben thinks. Neighbor perhaps. He almost turns and goes back upstairs, ill equipped to deal with anyone he doesn’t know and certainly not presentable, but then decides that this is his home, and whoever it is can deal with it.

Ben tracks the sound of Hux’s voice down the short hallway that leads to the kitchen, eyes narrowing as he comes around the corner and sees Hux with Millie in his arms, smiling down at a man who is lounging against the counter, his back to Ben. Hux’s eyes flick up to Ben, the smile on his face changing character.

“Hi, baby,” Hux says cautiously. Hopefully.

The other man starts, drawing up to his full height, which is perhaps half a foot shorter than Ben, and he turns to face Ben.

“Hi Ben,” he says, face carefully blank, but eyes wild with cautious apprehension.

Ben feels all the blood drain from his face, and out of the corner of his eye he sees Millicent squirm suddenly out of Hux’s arms and Hux mutters _shit_ , getting clawed in the process of her flight. Ben can feel the blood pounding between his temples, vision whiting out at the edges as adrenaline is dumped into his already weakened system. He grips the door frame at the last second before his knees give out.

“Poe. What.” He’d meant to say ‘ _what are you doing here?’_ , but his muddy brain could come up with just those two words.

Poe takes a step toward him and Ben jerks back, out of the kitchen. His eyes dart to Hux, whose expression is suddenly wary, lost. Ben looks back to Poe, who has pulled his hat off, leaving his hair tousled, the way it had always looked when Ben ran his hands through it. He backed another step out of the kitchen.

“Ben, I’m sorry to just drop in on you like this,” Poe begins, and to his credit he does sound like he regrets it. He should. He fucking _should_. “But we need to talk.”

Ben is shaking his head before Poe finishes that sentence. “We don’t. You need to leave.”

Poe looks from Ben to Hux, who has gone white, and back to Ben. “It’s about Snoke, Ben.”

Ben’s fingers go numb, his ears ringing, and he whirls away from Poe and walks blindly through the house, having no direction in mind but to just _get away_ . Behind him, he hears Poe call out, something about Ben _needing to hear this_ , and Hux telling him that _clearly he should leave_ , and then there are footsteps following him and he can’t tell whose.

His fingers scrabble at cold glass and then he is shoving the dining room door open, stumbling out into the snow in his bare feet. He barely notices the cold, walking across the patio and out into the yard, half running toward the shed. Someone calls his name behind him, but all he can hear is Snoke’s voice.

 

_That voice can be many things: thundering with disapproval, wry with sarcasm, singsong with gentle praise. Ben has been summoned to his office before, more than once, made to stand on the other side of that great, mahogany desk, and listen to Snoke recite his infractions, as though he’s memorized them from his teacher’s reports, or as though Snoke had been there, watching, somehow, whatever misdeed had garnered his interference._

_Ben is steel against the harsh words of others, against threats of expulsion and discipline; he doesn’t care and he won’t be made to. And yet he is not steel against the way Snoke tells him that day, to his utter surprise, that Ben is a fine boy, meant for better things. His gray eyes glimmer at Ben from behind the desk; he stands, circles until he is beside Ben, and places a hand on the back of his neck._

_“I would show you something, Ben,” he says in that English accent, guiding Ben with gentle pressure across the room to the window that looks down over the playing field, where not an hour before Ben was thrown from a soccer game for busting in a flippant mouth with his fist, knocking a front tooth out so that next time the bastard wanted to call Ben a queer, it would be with a lisp and a swollen lip._

_They stand at the window, looking down, Snoke’s hand still on the nape of Ben’s neck. One finger is moving, tracing the knobs of his spine, dipping just the barest bit below the hem of Ben’s practice shirt._

_“What do they look like to you?” Snoke asks._

_Ben considers the boys who surge back and forth across the field. “Ants.”_

_He can feel Snoke’s approval in the way his hand squeezes gently, the skin of his palm soft, strong. It makes his skin tingle. “Yes, Ben. Little more than that. They will go to follow in their father’s footsteps, become slaves to the machine, but you. You will be so much more.”_

 

Ben collides with the door of the shed, pulls the door open, and hurls himself inside. The scent of damp, cold earth permeates his nostrils, tomb-like, and he sucks in air, heart trying to batter its way out of his chest. A draft of cold air fans his back, fluttering his t-shirt, the door creaks, and he feels a presence behind him.

Ben whirls, and he half expects it to be Snoke, looming over him, but it’s only Poe.  _Only_.

Wisely, Poe remains in the open crack of the door, poised to back away from Ben’s wild energy. “I’m sorry, Ben,” Poe says. “You never let me say it.”

Ben stares at him, his mind screaming responses that his voice won’t deliver. _“Let you?”_ he finally growls. “Fuck you, Poe. So you just show up at my fucking house?”

Poe edges a step inside the shed, taking care not to let the door swing shut yet. Taking care not to trap Ben. That realization, his overt caution, makes Ben’s fight response begin to drain.

“I’m sorry, Ben,” Poe repeats, and there is a definite note of regret in his voice, carrying with it the weight of all they know of one another, of decades that bind them together. “I should have told you that it was me that told Luke sooner.”

“I _trusted_ you,” Ben says, the words sounding so plaintive and broken in his own ears that he has to turn his face away.

 

_They are in Poe’s bedroom, the summer Ben had turned sixteen. It seems like Ben is always at Poe’s, since Ben’s parents are never home. Ben is wearing nothing but boxers, which stick to him in the thick summer heat. A fan languishes in the window, barely stirring the air._

_Poe is on his stomach, the magazine he’d been reading forgotten, his dark brown eyes wide as he listens to Ben. Ben’s stomach is knotted and fluttery both, afraid of what he’s done and feeling like he’s part of something special at the same time. Hadn’t Snoke told him so? That Ben is the most perfect, beautiful boy he’d ever known, and that he is proud that Ben is so willing and obedient for him? It will make him a strong man, Snoke says, not to deny himself what he wants in life._

_“Ben,” Poe breathes, shutting the magazine, its pages damp in the humidity. “We have to tell your mom.”_

_Ben screws down his eyebrows, snatches Poe’s comic from him like he’ll hold it hostage. “You better not tell her shit.”_

_Poe disregards the comic book, sitting up crossed legged. Ben suddenly hates the way he’s looking at him, like Ben has grown two heads, or like he’s diseased._

_“Ben. It’s not right. He’s your dean. And he’s fucking … old. He shouldn’t be making you do this.”_

_Ben sits up, glaring. “He’s not that old,” he argues, like that was the most important point. “And besides. He didn’t make me do shit. I do what I want.”_

_Poe turns his face away, maybe trying to hide the look of disgust, and Ben suddenly panics. He reaches out, grabs Poe’s chin with one hand, wrenches his head back around to face him. “Promise me, Poe. You can’t tell.”_

_Poe just stares at him, his cheeks made puffy by Ben’s grip, but he finally nods. Ben lets go, sighing, then leans forward and touches their lips together._

 

Poe has taken another step inside, reaches up and puts a cautious hand on Ben’s forearm. Ben suddenly feels the cold, realizes he’s wearing no coat, no shoes.

“I was trying to protect you, Ben,” Poe says. “If I had it to do over, I would do the same thing. I’m not sorry for that, but I am sorry I lied to you about it.”

Ben takes a shuddering breath. “I loved you.” It comes out like an accusation.

Poe moves his hand from Ben’s arm, reaching up to touch the side of his face, thumb over the scar. “I love you too. That’s why I told.” He drops his hand then, suddenly, like it burns to touch him. “But that isn’t why I came here. I came to tell you that Snoke is dead.”

Ben’s muscles feel like jelly, knees quivering, and he backs away from Poe to slump down against the wall of the shed. For a moment, all he can do is stare at his bare feet, dirty from the wet snow and the floor of the shed, the toes an unhealthy bluish color. Finally, he manages one word: “How?”

Poe settles on the floor beside him, their shoulders touching. “A house fire. They think it was arson.”

A cracked laugh is torn from Ben’s throat. “Wasn’t me.”

Poe says nothing for a moment, sighing. When Ben finally glances at him, Poe is turning a gold ring on his left ring finger. He looks up at Ben, meeting his eyes. “I wish it had been me,” he says, and Ben isn’t exactly sure what he means.

They sit for what feels like a long while on the floor, snow falling beyond the open crack of the shed door, and Poe seems to be trying to draw Ben away from the memories of Snoke, of those few fucked up years that Ben has tried so hard not to think about. Poe asks him about Hux, about their house, and Ben can’t bring himself to say anything about their fake engagement. Poe tells him about his wife, Katie, an artist, and about their two year old daughter. He wants Ben to meet her. He tells Ben his parents miss him, and want him to come home, and that they know what happened with his unit in Afghanistan and that he’s been in Chicago all this time. That they are giving him the space he’s silently asking for. 

Eventually, the light starts to dim outside, early because it’s winter and the snow hasn’t let up, and Ben has started to shiver from the cold and from the adrenaline washing out of his system. Poe notices, smoothes a hand over Ben’s knee, stops talking about buying a ranch in Montana mid-sentence.

“We should get you inside,” he says.

Ben sighs, only now feeling the way the walls of the shed are frigid against his stiff muscles. He turns his head, looking at Poe, and seeing the same eyes of the first boy he’d kissed when he’d been twelve years old. His first everything.

“You should go,” Ben says, leaving it at that.

Poe searches his eyes, but nods, squeezing Ben’s knee and then levering himself up. He stoops and tucks a hand under Ben’s elbow, helping him struggle to his feet.

“Will I ever see you again?” Poe asks.

Ben forces a smile on, awkward around his chattering teeth. “Do I have a choice?”

Poe smirks, but the expression falls away quickly. “That’s up to you. I know I shouldn’t have come here today, but I wanted you to know you’re free of him.”

Ben’s stomach twists, and he looks out the door, a sudden gust of wind snatching it and flinging it back where it slams against the side of the shed. Snow showers down off the roof, like Snoke’s ghost had just reminded him of some intrinsic truth.

“I don’t know that I’ll ever be free of him,” Ben says quietly, “but maybe I can bury him.”

 

 

Poe leaves through the side yard while Ben trudges back to the house. The snow is over his ankles now, and his feet are numb by the time he reaches the patio door, fingers shaking as he tugs it open.

He tracks wet footprints across the wooden floor, feeling like Poe's visit had pulled a plug in the depths of his soul, and a thousand feelings are vying for the chance to circle the drain. He'd realized that has been trying to happen the entire time he'd been with Hux - his desperate hold on himself wanting to let go. He’d realized hiding in the shed with Poe that he didn’t want to process that with him, and that he didn’t want to process it alone. 

Ben looks for Hux in the kitchen, but it’s empty, the lights off. All the cookware Aislain had given them for Christmas is scattered all over the counters amid flour and sugar canisters, Hux’s spice rack, empty cloth bags from the grocery store folded on top of a box. A pot of coffee sits forgotten on the burner, half-full.

Still shaking, feeling cold to his bones, Ben crosses the house and finds Hux in the den. There’s a fire going in the fireplace, faux, but it casts a comforting, flickering gold hue across the couch, where Hux sits with his legs tucked beneath him. Ben’s favorite blanket is draped across his lap, and Hux’s phone is resting on his knee, Hux’s thumb resting on the screen, which has gone dark as though Hux had lost track of something he’d been doing.

Hux turns his head when the lamp throws Ben’s shadow across the coffee table. His forehead creases, and he looks unnaturally pale, shifting as though to get up but pausing when instead Ben walks toward the couch. Ben can’t stop shaking, wrapping his arms around himself in a futile effort to keep from flying apart, knowing he’s on that precipice again; if he takes this step, he knows he could just keep falling, never hit the bottom, or worse, smash against the rocks there with no one to put him back together.

He stares down into Hux’s warm eyes, feeling the claws of his past trying to snatch him back, to drag him backward into silence and loneliness. He moves closer to the couch, forces himself to sit down.

“I think maybe there are some things we should talk about,” he says, and just like that, he’s stepped out into empty air.


	8. No Space Between

Ben can feel the cold bleeding off him in waves, saturating the air around him like a shroud, and he can’t stop shaking. His feet are numb, the hems of his jeans wet against his ankles from trudging through two inches of snow. Even the heat from the fireplace seems to be repelled, unable to reach beneath his skin to thaw the ice in his veins.

_ I think maybe there are some things we should talk about. _

He’d said those words, only seconds ago, and now they hang between him and Hux, waiting to take on meaning and substance, which is something only Ben can give them. For a moment, Ben considers taking it back, changing the subject to something mundane, saying they need to talk about what rug best suits the guest bedroom, but then Hux reaches out and takes Ben’s hand and closes Ben’s frozen fingers between his palms.

“You’re freezing,” Hux says with a frown, a tiny line appearing between his eyebrows as he rubs friction into Ben’s hand, making his fingers tingle painfully as the blood begins to stir. Outside, the wind is howling through the eaves, flinging the snow off the roof and hurling it across the yard in a flurry of white.

“I feel numb,” Ben admits, not meaning only with cold. It’s a start, a feeling that he’s stated, something to work with if he can just string together more words to follow.

The crease between Hux’s brows grows more defined, and Ben thinks he’s registered the tone, knows there is more to it. Hux seems hesitant though, to interrupt the moment so heavily laden with unspoken words, choosing to wait for Ben to form them. The feeling in Ben’s hand is starting to come back, the skin pinkening between Hux’s palms. 

“Why did you not tell me that you had talked to Poe?” Ben asks, fingers twitching as he moves them out of Hux’s hand. He doesn’t object when Hux picks up the other, starts to rub the feeling gently back into it. 

Hux’s expression shifts from concerned to sheepish, golden-red hair falling over his forehead as he looks down, concentrating on massaging the length of Ben’s fingers. “I honestly forgot about it, Ben,” he admits, looking up from beneath the fringe of his hair as though to gauge whether Ben believed that. “You were in California, and I was drunk. On Facebook. He saw a…”

“I know how it happened,” Ben interrupts, pulling his other hand away and tucking them both beneath his arms as he folds them over his chest. “Poe told me when he explained how he found me. You should have told me, Hux. Something like that should have been important enough to remember.” 

Hux’s hands curl together in his lap, one finger picking anxiously at the cuticle of his thumb. He inhales, begins to speak, but the word cuts off mid-syllable. He replaces whatever he’d been about to say with: “I’m sorry.”  

Ben deflates, slumping against the back of the couch; he’s still cold, thinks he might never be warm again. Dusk is falling quickly beyond the windows, visibility through the snow dwindling and making the house feel insular, apart in an otherworldly way and reflecting Ben’s detached mood. 

“Do you know who Poe is?” Ben asks, keeping his gaze on the window lest Hux read something in his face that Ben can’t hide. His chest feels heavy, like his lungs have been filled with lead. 

“He said he was a childhood friend. An old military buddy,” Hux answers quietly, a note of resignation in his words like he already knows he’s wrong. 

Ben feels a spark of indignation toward Poe for lying to the man he loves. Or, more fairly, for being as vague about the truth as it was possible to be without actually being false. “He was more than that, Hux,” Ben says, sighing. 

Saying it out loud hurts, feels like a eulogy for a life that might have been so different had Ben’s innocence not been so thoroughly eroded. He wouldn’t change this, with Hux. He wouldn’t trade him for Poe, but Ben would trade himself, easily, for the man he might have been, before Anakin, before Snoke, before war. Now he is no more than a tapestry of tragedy and holes, threadbare.

Hux turns his face up, and Ben forces himself to meet his gaze. Hux is chewing the inside of his cheek, face wan. “I figured that much out,” he says sullenly. “As soon as I saw your face in the kitchen.” Hux pauses, running a hand through his hair, keeping his fingers threaded through it to hold it back from his face as he plants that elbow on the back of the couch. “So who was he? Someone you cared for?” Hux frowns. “Someone that hurt you?”

_ Didn’t those two things go together? _ Ben thinks to himself.  _ Can there be one without the other?  _

  
  


_ He can still remember the way Poe wouldn’t look at him that day, the way it made Ben feel flawed, more so than he already did. Ben is twenty-one, legs too long for the small booth they are squeezed into, knee knocking against the bottom of the table as his foot bounces beneath it. It’s making the spoon in his empty, strawberry-glazed bowl rattle, and Poe is watching it inch gradually along the side of the ceramic instead of watching Ben. It’s April, and outside the diner the trees are just starting to bud, green and white, and the foot traffic along the sidewalk throws reflections across the glass storefront, shadows over the formica tabletop. Ben is home for the first time since going to war; he’s harder around the edges, but sitting at their old booth, the one where they used to sit on the same side and hold hands under the table, makes him feel fifteen again. Instead of that being a good feeling, it makes Ben anxious, like he’s been running at a steady pace and suddenly slowed down enough that the past is gaining on him again. _

_ Poe’s feet move suddenly, trapping Ben’s ankle between two loafers, and the spoon goes silent. Ben looks up at him, frowning at the way Poe’s brow is beetled, like he’s angry. Poe’s never angry with him, never cross.  _

_ “Why won’t you go home, Ben?” Poe asks, not releasing his grip on Ben’s ankle. “Your parents haven’t seen you in four years.” _

_ Ben doesn’t pull his foot away, tilts the toe up to graze the back of Poe’s calf, smirking when Poe jerks his leg away, giving Ben that well-honed “be serious” look.  _

_ Ben sighs. “I don’t like the way they look at me.”  _

_ “Like they love you?” _

_ “Like I’m broken. Like they’re sorry for me.” Ben turns to look out the window, seeing his own reflection. His hair is too short, the military cut making his ears stand out. Self-consciously, he runs his fingers over the crew cut, flattening one ear to the side of his head. He hadn’t thought about his appearance this way in years. _

_ “You have to stop blaming them, Ben,” Poe says, reaching out and closing his hand on Ben’s wrist. One thumb traces the skin just below the hem of Ben’s sweatshirt, absently outlining the tattoo that is only weeks old. “If you need to blame someone, blame me.”  _

_ It takes a moment for that to register, because Ben is too focused on the way it feels to be touched this way, intimately. It’s been so long. They’d exchanged letters, talked on the phone, Poe always forcing news about his family on him, Ben listening in exchange for the more wanted words later, when Poe will talk about how he misses Ben in that soft croon, and about how he can’t wait to see him again. _

_ Ben turns his gaze from the window then, focuses on Poe’s face, which still bears that pained expression. Poe’s grip seems to tighten unconsciously on Ben’s wrist. _

_ “It was me, okay?” Poe says then. “I’m the one that told Luke.”  _

  
  


“He was the match that burned everything down,” Ben murmurs, dreamily, like the right words had just come to him to describe how Poe fit in his life. He glances at Hux to see that the meaning doesn’t register, green eyes narrowing like he’s trying to peer into Ben’s skull to discern the context. 

Ben shifts, pulling his knee up to his chest, shrinking away from Hux and against the back of the overstuffed couch. Gooseflesh peppers the skin of his arms. “Poe was my … I don’t know. Person. Best friend. Lover.” Hux looks instantly away at that, and Ben sees his jaw go stiff. “It was never official, I guess, but we always planned to end up together.” Ben pauses, sorting his thoughts, trying to decide how to order them, and Hux looks sharply back at him. 

“Is that why he was here? To … reconnect?” His voice is tight, more with anger than fear, Ben thinks. Though anger at whom?

Ben shakes his head. “He’s married. Has a kid.” 

“And if he wasn’t?” Hux asks.

Ben’s brows draw in over his nose, white-hot pain lancing through his forehead, threatening a migraine. “If he wasn’t,” he snaps, “I’d still have told him to leave and come back inside to you. Back into the fucking house I just bought with the man I want to spend the rest of my life with.”

Hux’s eyes take on a brief, round shape, then he looks down again, an abashed flush spreading over his nose. “Okay,” he mutters. “I’m sorry.” Hux reaches out then, curls his hand around Ben’s ankle before peering up at him cautiously. “Do you mean that? The … rest of your life thing?” His voice wavers through the words, betraying anxiety. 

Irritation thrums in Ben’s chest. “How can you even ask me that?” He darts a hand out, tucks two fingers beneath the silver chain just visible above Hux’s collar, and yanks the dogtags out from beneath Hux’s sweater, flicking them away to clatter against Hux’s chest. Hux flinches, jerking his hand up to close over them, protectively. 

“Do you think this was just some casual gesture?” Ben asks, the frustration and hurt of the last few months seeping into his tone. “That was my life. Everything I had planned for myself. How I thought I would die. It’s still my identity, why I am the person I am, who I’ll always be. And I gave it to you.”

“Ben, I…” Hux begins, but Ben isn’t finished. He’s raw, and Hux’s doubt feels like teeth on too-tender flesh. 

“This house.” Ben waves a hand, gesturing vaguely all around them. “Is that a casual gesture? I didn’t just want all this so I could be like everyone else. So my fucking family wouldn’t feel sorry for me.” 

The flush has spread to Hux’s cheeks now. “You think that’s what this is about?” His voice is small, incredulous.

Ben growls. He hadn’t intended this subject to come up, wasn’t ready for it, but Hux’s insinuation that Ben would ever leave him has ripped the band-aid off this wound and now it needed to breathe. “I heard you on the deck, talking to Donnie. Telling him that all you wanted was to be like other people. Have a house, be married so people wouldn’t pity you.”

Hux goes white, moves his hand from where it covers the dogtags to press his fingers beneath Ben’s, but Ben has an iron grip on his bicep, arms crossed defensively, and he doesn’t let up for Hux to take his hand. Hux lets out a plaintive huff of air.

“Do you think that’s all I want?” Hux asks, a note of desperation in his words. “Just to play house with someone? That this is my … biological clock ticking?” He gets one finger beneath Ben’s, trying to pry it free, trying to connect.

Ben is looking at the fire now, though he’s heated with anger. Hurt. “I don’t know what you want,” he says. “If it’s me, or just anyone.”

Hux’s hand freezes. “It’s just you, Ben. I would trade all this for a cardboard box in a back alley if it meant I could have you.”

Ben still doesn’t look at him, but the anger starts to trickle down his spine, draining out; he knows Hux well enough to hear the sincerity in his voice, the pleading tone begging for Ben to believe him. He’s still trying to hold Ben’s hand, and Ben takes a deep breath, exhales through his nose, and relents, letting go of his arm and allowing Hux to curl his fingers over Ben’s. 

Hux pulls the hand to his lips, kissing it. “I’d hoped if I put off telling anyone about the fact that we … I … lied about being engaged, maybe you’d decide you really wanted it.”

Finally, Ben turns his head. Hux is holding Ben’s hand in his lap, both of his own hands wrapped around it. “I did want it,” Ben tells him softly, thinking of Hux’s birthday, and how he’d had the ring in his pocket, trying to find the right moment. “I still want it.”

“Then…” Hux begins, but Ben interrupts him. 

“There are things that you should know, first,” he forces himself to say, and it feels suddenly like a thousand bugs are crawling across the expanse of his flesh, and he rubs at one arm as though to brush the vile sensation away. “Something I need to deal with because it’s weighing me down.” 

Hux tracks that motion, green eyes wary when they return to meet Ben’s again. “You can tell me anything, Ben.” 

Ben sighs, heart fluttering wildly. He isn’t sure he can do this, can open this closet full of skeletons.

“Poe… came here to tell me that someone from my past had died,” he begins, swallowing, suddenly desperately thirsty and realizing that this is the most he’s spoken in weeks.  

“I’m sorry,” Hux tries, and twitches when Ben laughs. It’s a manic sound, incongruous. 

“No, you’re not sorry.” Ben says. “And neither am I.”

  
  


_ It had begun innocently enough, or so it seemed. In retrospect, Ben knows there was never, for one moment, anything innocent about it.  _

_ After that day where they’d looked down on the soccer field together, Ben takes to coming to Snoke’s office for what the headmaster of his private school refers to as “guidance.” The first time, Snoke has Ben come on his lunch hour, and surprises a delighted Ben with pizza and coke, a luxury that Ben has sorely missed since being displaced in the Connecticut countryside. Ben doesn’t really notice that Snoke does not touch the food, merely having a slice resting on his paper plate on the desk, a sort of false communion.  _

_ He talks to Ben about his classes, and at first Ben is wary of admitting that he struggles with his studies, not wanting to disappoint his new benefactor, but the first time he attempts to lie, Snoke barks at him, face growing dark, and says that he will not tolerate that from his charge. He seems to have an almost preternatural knowledge of Ben’s schedule, of his grades, his relationships with teachers and students alike. He tells Ben it is because he has marked Ben as special, and that makes Ben glow. No one has called him special before - certainly not an authority figure, a man with three degrees on the wall and shelves of books, who has traveled the world and seen far more than young Ben Solo ever would.  _

_ Lunch in Snoke’s office gradually turns into dinner in the town outside the school proper. Ben finds that thrilling, especially as Snoke doesn’t frequent the sort of establishment popular with kids Ben’s age. Instead, he imparts an education on fine cuisine: French, Greek, Italian, Moroccan, all in the guise of enriching Ben’s character. Ben never thinks it odd that Snoke places a hand on the small of his back to guide him through a door, or takes overmuch interest in Ben’s appearance, straightening his ties, finger combing his hair into order, thumbs sometimes brushing across the ridges of his cheekbones, tracing his eyebrows. Snoke tells him he’s a handsome boy, who should take better care of his appearance.  _

_ Snoke takes Ben to his first opera, which Ben hates, but tries valiantly not to reveal to his mentor. Nevertheless, he fidgets, leg restless until Snoke puts a stilling hand on it. Leaves it there, like a reminder to pay attention and learn. They go to plays, and afterward Snoke invites him to his private residence, ostensibly to discuss the plays, and Ben thinks it’s fantastic that the headmaster offers him wine on those occasions. He feels that it means Snoke sees his maturity, regards him as an equal. When Snoke encourages him to share his secrets, Ben obliges. They talk about boys that have caught Ben’s interest, about the challenges of love, the awkwardness of sex, and there is no judgment, which is heady. _

 

“By the time I realized there was more to it,” Ben tells Hux, “I didn’t care. I would have done anything he wanted, not to lose what I had. Someone I respected that I thought actually cared about me.” 

To his credit, Hux manages not to betray his inner thoughts with any particular expression. “And what did he want?” 

Ben shrugs one shoulder. “Everything. And I gave it to him, for almost a year. I was actually convinced he loved me. Told me he had a summer home in Italy, that we’d go there when I graduated, and he’d show me Europe.” 

Hux’s lips twitch, the only evidence of his emotion beyond the way his eyes have gone flat, and turned a shade of iron gray Ben has never seen before. “And he’s dead now?” 

“Yes.” Ben’s hand is limp in Hux’s, and he feels boneless, like some massive dam has crumbled and everything walled away behind is washing free. 

“Good,” Hux snaps. “He’s fucking lucky.” 

For some reason, that makes Ben smile. That he can smile at all feels hopeful. He suddenly needs to hold Hux, to have no space between them, so he stretches out on the couch and pulls Hux down to lie with his back pressed to Ben’s chest. Ben rests his cheek against the side of his head, finding it easier to talk when he’s not facing him. 

“Poe is the one that told my uncle, who was an English professor at my school. He’d promised me he wouldn’t tell my mother, so it was his way of keeping that promise, I guess. He didn’t tell me until after my first tour of duty, thinking that if I blamed him I’d forgive my parents, but… instead I shut him out too.” Ben’s words are quiet, spoken almost into Hux’s ear. 

Hux finds Ben’s fingers and twines theirs together. “Forgive your parents?” 

Ben sighs, doubting now, as he had for years, whether he had any right to be angry. “I blamed them for forcing me to live with that at school, for going public with everything. There was a trial, even though I refused to testify. My mother hated that. Couldn’t understand why I wanted to protect him, but I still thought …” He trails off, inhaling deeply. Hux squeezes his hand. 

“Eventually,” Ben goes on, “other students came forward. Older ones that had seen this on television. I remember it felt like I’d been hit by a train. I confronted him about it, and he … just laughed at me. Told me I was pathetic, would never amount to anything, that he was disappointed in me for being weak.” 

“Jesus,” Hux murmurs. “You’re the opposite of weak, Ben. I hope you know that now.” 

Ben bows his head, nuzzling the side of Hux’s neck. “Sometimes I still feel like it’s all just a convincing act. That you’ll think the same thing one day.”

Hux doesn’t reply for a moment, but then squirms in Ben’s embrace, turning around to look at Ben. They are pressed close together in the space available, and Hux’s nose is nearly touching Ben’s. His words are warm against Ben’s lips. 

“I will never think that, Ben Solo.” 

Ben touches their noses together. “Not even in fifty years?” 

Hux smiles softly. “Definitely not.” 

“You don’t think I’m … broken?” Ben asks, his face hot with shame. 

Hux closes the space between their lips now, kissing Ben so softly it makes him shiver. “You are not broken,” he says, trailing feather-light kisses across the contours of Ben’s face. “You survived being manipulated and used by someone who should have protected you.” Ben tries to hide his face in Hux’s neck, but Hux maneuvers a hand between them and tilts Ben’s chin back up so their eyes meet. “You survived a war. You survived a visit with my extended family.” 

Ben squeezes his eyes shut with a short laugh, finding Hux’s lips blindly and pressing a long, anchoring kiss to them. “I love you,” he murmurs when they part. 

“I love you, too,” Hux whispers. “Are we okay?” 

Ben wraps his arm more tightly around Hux’s torso, pulling him close and kissing his head. “Not yet,” he sighs. “There’s one more thing I have to do.” 

Hux looks confused, anxious. “Wh…” he begins, then squawks when Ben nearly rolls him off the couch in his effort to extract himself from it.

“Stay here,” he tells Hux, heart in his throat. Hux sits upright on the couch after Ben climbs over him, hair askew, shirt rumpled. He looks worried, and Ben feels a pang of regret for that. 

“Are you sure?” Hux asks. “I can…”

Ben glances over his shoulder as he’s walking from the room. “I’m sure. I’ll be back in a minute.” Around him, the world feels like it’s spinning faster, and he has to remind himself to breathe as he takes the stairs two at a time. 

The .35 caliber ammunition canister is heavier than Ben remembers it being as he lifts it down from the top shelf of their closet. He stands for a moment, holding it in his arms and letting his mind rest with the images around him. Hux’s clothes line the left side, color coded, while Ben’s are on the right, having no visible pattern to their organization. Their ties are now intermixed on the rack that hangs over the door, and Ben has a sneaking suspicion some of his are now missing, but Hux claims no knowledge of that, and insists that he has a lot of ties that would look great on Ben. On the back wall, their shoes share a three-tiered shelf that they’d bought at Ikea, and then they'd gotten drunk and put it together wrong, so it’s shorter on one side, and the shoes bunch up toward the end, and they didn’t realize it until the next day, when they were sober. For some reason, they’d just never fixed it. There are boxes on the top shelf of summer clothes, Ben’s and Hux’s packed in the same bins to save space. All of this, this closet, is inside the house that they both own, where they’re supposed to grow old together. 

Ben takes the box out into the bedroom, sitting down on the edge of the bed to open it. He takes out the Glock 19 which he’d hidden there after the day Hux had discovered it in his sock drawer, knowing that this box is perhaps the only thing into which Hux wouldn’t try to incorporate his own things. 

He sets that aside, drawing out a battered envelope, worn from being handled many times, and cracks it open, thumbing the newspaper articles inside. Seventeen-year-old Ben had kept everything on Snoke’s arrest, on the trial, on the other students that had come forward, and he’d carried this with him ever after, concealed in this box. He knows he should throw it all out, burn it perhaps, but it would not erase the memories, the fact that he has memorized every black and white photograph, every line of text. 

He sets that aside as well, picking up the cards and letters he’d gotten while in the service. He smiles as he looks at the cover of one purple envelope, decorated with a crudely drawn unicorn with a rainbow mane, and addressed with a child’s penmanship. Ben knows there’s a picture inside, of Rey Antilles in second grade, missing a front tooth in her wide grin. There are dozens of such envelopes; it’s how Ben had seen his little cousin grow up. There are other letters, from Luke, from his mother and father, but Rey had always been the only one Ben wrote back to. 

At the bottom of the case, beneath pictures of him and Poe on leave, various trinkets Ben had collected overseas, is the small velvet box that has the ring he’d bought in California. Taking it out, Ben opens it with one thumb, then runs that finger over the band. He remembers how he’d browsed in that store for almost an hour, losing himself in thought and often staring at nothing, before he finally saw this ring, and knew it was the one. The center of the band is black, tiny chips of stone the shopkeeper had told Ben were black diamonds, two bands of silver on either side making them gleam darkly. 

Ben shuts the lid of the box, tucking it into his pocket, and returns everything else to the ammunition canister. He leaves it on the bed, grabs his phone from the bedside table, and goes back downstairs, pulse picking up with every step. He knows why he’s chosen this moment, as he’s riding a wave of impulse and relief, knowing himself well enough that if he puts it off again, he’ll crash back to Earth after this afternoon and start questioning everything again. He’ll find reasons to doubt. 

Hux is on the couch where Ben had left him, curled against the armrest with Millie on his lap. He looks up at Ben when he enters the room, brow creased. He must have tensed, because Millicent’s ears turn backward and her tail flicks. 

“Everything okay?” Hux asks cautiously as Ben settles on the couch. 

Ben smiles at him, keying his phone display on. “Yeah. I’m going to call my mom. Wish me luck.” 

Hux’s eyebrows go up. “You’re ready for that?” 

Ben’s palms are sweating, clammy. His heart is thumping erratically. “No, I’m not. But I wasn’t ready for Poe to be in my kitchen this morning. Wasn’t ready to hear Snoke is dead, or ready to tell you about it. So…” Ben takes a deep breath. “Might as well keep the momentum going.” 

He scrolls to his mother’s contact information, then presses send. It rings once, twice, three times, and Ben’s stomach starts to sink, thinking that if this doesn’t go right, it has to be a sign that he’s moving too fast, that he’s not ready, that…

_ “Hello? Ben?”  _ The voice on the other end is breathless, a touch too high, and there is background noise that sounds like a crowd, many people talking. 

“Hi, Mom,” Ben says, his nose going instantly warm and eyes watering. He’s suddenly a teenager again, has never been a soldier. he's just his mother’s son.

_ “Where are you? Are you okay?”  _ Leia’s voice is almost frantic, and Ben hears a door slam. Instantly, the background noise fades.

“I’m fine,” Ben says. “I’m in Chicago. At home.” His chest aches with guilt, for having put this off for so long. 

There is a long silence.  _ “I don’t know what to say, Ben. We didn’t know if you were alive, dead, for months.”  _ She doesn’t sound angry. Just sad. 

“I had some things I had to work through,” Ben says softly, knowing that’s not an excuse. Hux reaches out and twines his fingers through Ben’s. “How’s Dad?” 

A huff of laughter makes static in the phone. “Oh, you know your father. Still hasn’t grown up.”

Ben smiles to himself, but it fades quickly. “Poe came to see me today. He told me about Snoke.” 

_ “Fucking bastard got what he deserved,”  _ Leia snaps. “ _ I hope he rots in hell.”  _

Ben almost laughs, having somehow forgotten how vehemently fierce his mother could be. She would have made a great soldier. It makes him regret having tried to get through losing the military without her support. 

Leia interprets his silence differently:  _ “How are you holding up? Is Poe still there?”  _

Ben takes a deep breath. “No. He left. I’m with my fiancé.” Hux’s hand twitches in Ben’s grip.

It’s Leia’s turn to be silent for a span of seconds, then inhales sharply.  _ “Benjamin Lukas Organa-Solo, I swear to god, you can run off and join the military and live in Chicago and not call me for three years if you want to but you are  _ not _ getting married without your mother. You better put yourself and that boy on a plane and …”  _

Ben’s laughter drowns out the rest of this litany, the humor easing the tension in his chest. “Okay, okay,” he says, and thinks he hears her trying to blow her nose discreetly. “Here, you can say hello to him.” 

Ben holds the phone out to Hux, who looks at him like a deer in headlights, but gingerly takes the phone. Ben bites his lip as he listens to one side of the conversation.

“Hello? … Yes… Well I haven’t actually … Oh, okay… Georgia, originally… I should probably plead the fifth on th…. Well, yes… He does take vitamins, yes…” 

Hux’s face is pink, expression somewhere between horrified and trying not to laugh. “No, he never learned to cook. Yes, it’s probably a bad idea… New York, got it. Three weeks?” 

Hux gives Ben a questioning look, and Ben nods. “Yes,” Hux says into the phone. “Okay, I’ll tell him...  No blackberries, got it….Yes, you too, Mrs. Solo….Sorry… Leia…. Talk with you soon then.” 

Ben holds his hand out for the phone, but Hux seems too stunned to hand it to him as he takes it away from his ear. Ben sees the screen go blank, the call having obviously been disconnected. 

“She um… said that she’ll call back in an hour. She’s in Washington and hiding in a bathroom stall.” Hux looks dazed. “What just happened?”

Ben takes the phone back, tosses it on the coffee table. There are no lights on in the living room beyond the fire, and Hux is a spectrum of reds and golds. The snow is still falling, though not buffeted as much by the wind, adorning the corners of the windowsill. 

“You just met my mother,” Ben says, smiling. “Brief glimpse into the chaos that is my family.”

Hux is silent for a moment, staring at the phone on the table, then he looks at Ben, brow furrowed. “You told her we’re engaged.” 

Ben’s heartbeat picks up again, throat feeling too tight to form words, and so he nods. 

One corner of Hux’s mouth turns down. “Are we … keeping up with that ruse then? Or …” he trails off.

Ben’s hand is trembling when he slides it into his pocket, closes his fingers around the box. He just hangs onto it for a moment, trying to breathe enough to speak, trying to tell himself that Hux does want this, that he’d just said as much earlier, right here on the couch. 

“I knew I wanted this in Georgia,” Ben says. “When you said you wanted it to be real. For us, our relationship, to be real.” Ben pulls the box out slowly, holding it tightly to still his shaking fingers. He sees Hux’s eyes dart to his hand, go round with understanding; when he turns his face back to Ben, his nose and cheeks are flushed pink. 

Ben sets the box on the couch between them, forces himself to let go of it and draw his hand away. “So, if you want this engagement to be real, too... then so do I.” He says this last without breath, tries to find somewhere to put his hand, settles for tucking it beneath his arm. 

Ben knows this isn’t much in the way of a marriage proposal; he’d once imagined getting down on one knee in Union Station, a crowd to witness as he delivered some poetic plea for Hux’s hand, and yet instead, he’s sitting on a couch in wrinkled blue jeans, hair tangled and unwashed. He supposes this is just how things happen, when they’re supposed to, and that a simple gesture is meaningful in that it mirrors the authenticity of life - the days when Ben doesn’t want to get out of bed, the times they have whispered conversations about their doubts and fears and dark secrets, days when they do nothing more than sit beside each other. 

Hux stretches out his hand, fingers grazing the soft, dark box tentatively, as though he’s afraid it will evaporate. When it does not, he picks it up, holding it against his chest. 

“Is this …” he starts to ask, voice wavering. “Ben. Say it. Actually say the words. Please.” 

Ben’s lips quirk with a smile; ambiguity in the past has not served them well. He takes a deep breath, exhales slowly. “Will you … actually … marry me?”

Hux’s eyes grow brighter, swimming with moisture that catches in the firelight. “Yes,” he says. “I actually will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The story will end here, and the third installment will be out soon! Subscribe to me as an author, or check me out on TUmblr to see when! (sorry for the duplicate email about this chapter, didn't know it would do that).

**Author's Note:**

> I'll appreciate any thoughts / comments / or yelling at me you might like to do here on AO3 and also on [Tumblr.](http://kyluxtrashcompactor.tumblr.com/)


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